


Dark Water

by LinearA



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (spoilers from here:), Alternate Universe - 1950s, Alternate Universe - Noir, Angst, Arson, Bisexual Ben Solo, Bisexual Finn (Star Wars), Dirty Talk, Drinking, Environmental Disaster, Executive Order 9066, Extremely Serious Mistakes Have Been Made, F/M, Gun Violence, Irresponsible Methods of Birth Control, Mental Health Issues, Motorcycles, Murder, One-sided Rose Tico/Armitage Hux, Past Ben Solo/Dopheld Mitaka, Past Child Abuse, Past Finn/Poe Dameron, Past Sexual Abuse, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Sexism, Rey is Jewish I have decided to die on this hill I guess, Ross Macdonald homage, Rough Sex, Smoking, Stockings, Under-negotiated Kink, War, conversion therapy, no slurs, strangely reminiscent of present-day racism sexism and homophobia hmmm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2020-01-06 15:08:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 107,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18390872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinearA/pseuds/LinearA
Summary: Reina “Rey” Jaffa knows a thing or two about the ways people disappear.  They all do, at Resistencia Investigations.  So when Ben Solo’s mother comes calling with a case that ought to be cold, something about the way the rich boy vanished doesn't sit right.  Digging deep into the roots of a sunny California town, Rey finds a web of crime that stretches from Mexico to Japan, but even the dark business of gamblers and smugglers can't provide the answers she’s looking for.  What connects a runaway maid, an inherited orchard, an ominously-named river, and a dangerous man on a Vincent Black Knight motorcycle?Every town has its sins, and every sin has its price, but it's not always the guilty who pay. Nobody knows that better than Rey.Except maybe Ben Solo.





	1. The Two Clients

**Author's Note:**

> There is racism, sexism, and homophobia in this story, because to sanitize the past would be antithetical to the demands of both genre and theme — but at the same time it would be gross to roll around in the worst an era had to offer; noir is a walk in the shadows, not a swim in the sewer, and this is meant to be about people armoring themselves with courage and intelligence against a sharp-edged world. I'm not going to employ any slurs, but some characters will expect and encounter insults from others. If you have concerns or would like more thorough tagging or top-of-chapter notes, my DMs are currently open.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe, ever the romantic, pouts slightly in protest. Before he can try to sell her on the forbidden love of the gentleman and the maid, though, they hear a woman's heels clicking rapidly up the walkway to their stairs, and Poe throws himself backwards in his rolling chair, catching himself against the window. He raises one wooden slat of the blinds with two fingers. “Well, well, well. Rich white lady, incoming.”

On the corner of Sunset and Resistencia, the mercury's at 86 Farenheit. They keep the blinds down against the late morning sun. The ceiling fan turns cracked wooden blades, and beneath the table where they meet with clients, Rey surreptitiously slips her feet out of her shoes. Business must be slow at the barbershop downstairs; the owner’s favorite record comes up faintly through the floor, with a sweet, throbbing voice. _Adoro a mi tierra._ It agitates the man who’s slumped in the imitation-leather armchair they keep for clients. He turns his hat in his hands, and points again at the photograph he’s given them.

“Her name is Rose,” he says hoarsely. “Rose Thai Cô. She's been with my family in French Indochina ever since I was a boy; she came here with me last year.” He’s got that upper-crust voice; _a real pukka sahib,_ Rey thinks, and feels her face turn surly. She lowers it so he doesn't see. “But she disappeared on Wednesday. Along with some — significant — documents.”

“And you think she left of her own free will?” Poe asks.

“More or less.” The client won’t look at any of them. He’d rapped on their door with his nose in the air, all peremptory arrogance, but that'd collapsed soon enough, like a soufflé in a hurricane. He's not the first prospective client to assume Rey or Poe or Finn — in spite of Finn's sharp white spring suit — must do menial work for the detectives he's looking for. It’s not unusual — it’s half the basis for their business, that they don’t look like most people’s idea of a detective. What's unusual is that he hadn't hurried out when he found out he was wrong. _He must be desperate,_ Rey thinks. She eyes the sweat that beads above his eyebrows. It's hot but it's not _that_ hot. April in Los Angeles should be nothing to a man who's used to Indochina.

Poe leans an elbow on the table. “More or less, Mr. — sorry, what was the name?”

“Huxley. But you see I’m afraid my wife may have said something to her. Something harsh. Possibly — struck her. I wouldn’t put it past her. And Rose wouldn’t stand for that, you know. She’s very — ” He presses his thin lips into a mournful line. “Spirited.”

Poe’s eyes flick over to Rey, narrow with the questions he’s not asking. “And you want us to find her. That's it — just find her?”

“Well, I mean to say.” Huxley swallows and straightens, trying to find some starch, or maybe some spine. “What’s essential is that I recover the stolen documents.”

“If they’re stolen,” Finn says, in his own toffee-nosed accent, “hadn't you better go to the police? We're not keen on handling stolen goods.”

The man in the chair starts a little. Finn’s good at accents. He can sound American if he wants to, and in L.A., he usually does. When Rey met him he’d been doing a better-than-average Algerian, making up fake Berber words when he didn't know the Arabic; he’d had her fooled for days.

“The plans aren’t— the documents that were taken aren’t inherently valuable. They are essential to my business affairs; I must have them back by Friday, Friday evening at the very latest. But I have no interest in pressing charges. I would prefer — not to involve the authorities.”

“So you just want the documents back?” Poe asks. “That’s it?”

Huxley’s lips compress again, but not before Rey sees them tremble. “If you can persuade her — you could offer my apologies to her for my wife’s behavior. She could come back; I promise I wouldn't let it happen again.”

“You’d take her back after she stole from you?” Rey should keep her mouth shut, but she’s startled.

The client shifts uncomfortably. The slow turn of the ceiling fan stirs motes of dust. Where they catch in the thin line of sunlight the Venetian blinds let in, they glow above his coppery head like sparks from a fire. “I trust she’ll be sufficiently apologetic herself, of course.”

“If she’s not?” Poe asks. “Understand, we just need to agree on what the terms of this case are. When we can agree the job is done. Say we get your... documents. But Miss Rose doesn’t feel like apologizing. Are we done? Or is there something else you want? Information, maybe?”

Huxley looks wretched. “I’d just want to know if she was well, of course. Whether she’s found another position.” Something icy and unwell passes through his eyes and makes them glitter as he adds, “Who she’s with. If there’s a man, I want to know.” Then the cold thing blows away like a breeze, and the misery washes back in, a high tide of pain in the blue eyes. “No. Never mind. I don’t want to know. I don’t care.”

Ah. So that’s what’s wrong with him. Explains why he thinks his wife might’ve hit the maid, too. It’s an ugly picture; Rey hopes this girl Rose has the sense not to go back. Downstairs, the needle lifts off the Flor Sylvestre record.

“Got it,” Poe says briskly. “We charge thirty-seven a day per detective, plus expenses.”

It’s a dirt cheap rate to be giving a man who can afford a maid, but Huxley grimaces like he’s being gouged. “Can I choose to employ only one of you, in that case? Even seventy-four a day is much more than I’m able to budget.”

“It's up to you, but more detectives will get the job done faster.”

“Just one,” Huxley repeats. “I imagine you require a retainer.”

“We do. If you can only afford one of us, I think you’d better employ Mr. Askari.”

“Askari,” Huxley says, pulling on the _A_ s, and looking at Finn as if something has become clear.

“You said she was Indochinese. Mr. Askari speaks French.”

Huxley says something in French to Finn; Rey only catches the word for Africa. Finn answers politely. Rey doesn't know, but it stands to reason that his French accent is as good as all his others. “Do you have any potential clues beyond the photograph, Mr. Huxley?” Finn asks in English. “You told us you live in Santa Teresa, but you inquired at the Golden Dragon down the street — is there a reason you began there?”

The new client coughs and reaches into his suit coat. He takes out a purse, the soft kind that closes with a single little snap, embroidered with the blossoming branches of trees. You can get them for a nickel in New Chinatown, but this one looks worn, and it's clearly not empty.

“She left this behind. There was a matchbook from the Golden Dragon in it. There are other things in it, but...” Huxley shrugs. “Not much of value. She must have put everything in the case the papers were in.” Reluctantly, Finn's client puts the purse on the table. “I suppose she must have taken the bus down here on her days off. I believe she has some family in the area. I never — I never inquired… ” He trails off.

"And these papers — what do they look like?"

Is that a tic in Huxley's cheek? The man is a wreck. It seems clear to Rey that he's fighting a moment-to-moment battle with despair. “Blueprints. The old-fashioned kind, actually blue. There should be four sheets. The case she took was built to hold them flat, but they could be removed and rolled. Or — folded.” He seems to flinch from the thought.

 _Not much in this man's life makes him happy,_ Rey thinks. _Not his marriage and not his business, whatever it is. But it looks like maybe Rose did. Does he think Finn can get his happiness back for him?_ She examines his pale, haggard face from the corner of her eye. She doesn't find any sign of hope in it. He seems braced for disaster. _Probably just as well for him._

Mr. Huxley counts thirty-seven dollars out of his wallet, and hands Finn his business card between two fingers white with pressure. Finn gives him his card in exchange, with the number of the answering service Resistencia Investigations uses.

Huxley rises to go, then stops, still worrying at the brim of his grey felt hat. “If I — if I give you my telephone number at home. Can I trust you not to disclose any of this to anyone besides me who may answer?”

Finn's face is as still as a mask. “Naturally. I'm a professional, Mr. Huxley.”

Their new client doesn't say anything. He scribbles a number on the back of the card with a pencil from his pocket, nods, and shuts the door crisply behind him.

Poe waits until his footsteps have faded away down the stairs before he leans back in his chair and puts his feet up on the table with a whistle. “So. Mr. Armand Huxley. Late of _Indochine.”_ He hits the French hard. “What's he do, Finn?”

“I'm not sure," Finn says, accent sliding back from Oxbridge to Echo Park in three words. He turns over the card he's been handed. “Blueprints and a blue pencil in his pocket might mean architect or engineer. Card doesn't say, though; just his name.”

“If he’s in Santa Teresa, he might be in oil,” Poe guesses. “Or just professionally rich.”

“Or professionally criminal,” Rey snorts. “He was plenty eager not to involve the cops.”

Poe, ever the romantic, pouts slightly in protest. Before he can try to sell her on the forbidden love of the gentleman and the maid, though, they hear a woman's heels clicking rapidly up the walkway to their stairs, and Poe throws himself backwards in his rolling chair, catching himself against the window. He raises one wooden slat of the blinds with two fingers. “Well, well, well. Rich white lady, incoming.”

He sweeps the cash and the missing maid's purse off the table, and heads for their back room, where they keep the safe and the works-in-progress. Finn lets him take it. “Good odds we're about to meet Mrs. Huxley, you think?”

“Could be,” Poe says doubtfully, as he half-closes the back room’s door and the heels tap closer. There's a determined knock. Rey slips her sling-backs back on and goes to answer it. Ready as always to be asked where the detective is.

The lady behind the door is definitely rich. It’s written in every thread of her carefully-structured suit, as iridescently green as a beetle’s wing. It shines in the immaculate white of her day gloves. From under the ridged helmet of a densely-feathered hat, she looks inquiringly up at Rey. “Hello, young lady; I’m looking for Francisco de Marino and — "

The cashbox crashes to the ground as Poe comes dashing out from the back room. _“Mrs. Solo?”_

 _“There_ you are, Paco!” cries the lady in the trim green suit, and holds out her arms. Poe runs to embrace her, laughing and exclaiming and almost lifting her off the ground. Rey and Finn, behind them, exchange a puzzled look.

Poe lets her go and runs his hand back over the hair she’s tousled. “Let me introduce my business partners. This is Miss Reina Jaffa." The rich woman holds out her hand to Rey readily. Her grip is firm, as if they were making a decisive deal there and then. “And this is Mr. Finn Askari.” Poe seems never to doubt that Mrs. Solo will shake Finn’s hand, and she does, as briskly as she’d shaken Rey’s. “Rey, Finn, this is Leila Solo; my mother used to work for her up in Santa Teresa. She's practically my godmother. How are you, Mrs. Solo? How's Arturo?”

Rey marvels at the brightness of the smile that splits his face as Mrs. Solo gives him the news about a host of people Rey’s never heard of, all of who apparently either work for, used to work for, live by, or used to live by, Mrs. Solo. She sees Finn watching, too, wide eyes moving between their partner and the woman he’s so happy to see. Two clients in one day is unusual; two clients who’ve come a hundred miles down the coast from Santa Teresa is downright strange. If Mrs. Solo is a client, that is.

But there’s something other than nostalgia filtering into the conversation, something other than pure happiness and catch-up talk. Name by name, the pace of their chatter slows and the pitch of their voices drops, until finally Poe’s face has only the hopeful ghost of a smile as he asks, “What about the old man? How’s Mr. Solo?”

She sighs. It's a complicated sigh; it wants to be one of those light-comedy sighs of loving exasperation with a wayward husband, but there's real fear and a fierce anger lurking behind it, like figures behind frosted glass.

Rey's been in this business for years. She's heard a lot of sighs like it.

"Well, that's rather why I'm here," Mrs. Solo says. "Not that it isn't wonderful to see you again after all these years, Paco. But I do need a detective. One, at least, though I think you're all in the business?" She casts a knowing glance at Rey, who realizes, belatedly, that she's maybe been assessed a little more thoroughly than she thought. "My husband seems to have... wandered off. To Las Vegas. As I’m sure you know husbands sometimes do. But he's been gone two days now, so if someone could go and retrieve my lousy bum of a sweetheart for me, I'd be much obliged."

"Sure thing, Mrs. Solo. Finn's already got a case, but I'd be happy to drive out — "

"I'd prefer it if Miss Jaffa went." Her voice is firm and final. Poe stares.

Mrs. Solo sits down in the fake-leather armchair, crossing her hands. She looks up at them. Her expression is steady, but so sad Rey's chest suddenly hurts. She sinks into her own chair at the consulting table, and her partners slowly follow suit.

"Han — that's my husband, Hans Solo — does like to drink and gamble; I won't begin to deny it. But I don't think he left the house at one in the morning, shouting nonsense about Nevada, because he's a libertine. Not this time." She opens her pocketbook and, after a moment of hesitation, takes out a photograph. She slides it across the table, and Poe sucks in a breath.

"Mrs. Solo," he starts. His voice is wrung with pity. "Mrs. Solo, I — "

"This is my son," she interrupts, as if he hadn't spoken. Her eyes are fixed on the picture. _"Our_ son. Benjamin. I have not seen him in three years."

Rey looks down at the photograph. It’s a formal college portrait. The boy in it is thin, so thin. His cheeks look hollow, and his ears stand out from his crew-cut head like the handles of a pitcher. Under a grim, adult brow, his eyes are young and frightened. Rey feels her heart crack a little.

"Mrs. Solo," Poe says again, and then, in an agonized almost-whisper, _"Leila."_

Mrs. Solo does not bend or move her gaze. "In his final year of college here, Ben was in an altercation in a bar. I say an altercation. I'm told he beat a man unconscious with a pool cue. No charges were pressed, but the University expelled him. He came home to us in Santa Teresa. It was exactly three years ago last week.” Poe’s given up interrupting but his eyes are bright with salt water as she takes a breath. “He went out on a Saturday before we woke up. Around noon Han realized his service pistol was missing. Ben’s car was found at Mariposa Beach. Finding it was the last action the police took in the case; they refused to make further inquiries.”

Rey swallows. She has trouble imagining the thin boy in a bar, let alone a bar fight, but it's all too easy to imagine those scared, lost eyes turned out to sea on a lonely morning. And Mrs. Solo and her husband — Rey knows that pain all too well. _Gone, gone, gone._

Finn's tactfully silent, but there's a slight crease to his forehead, and after a second Rey's mind catches up with his. This woman is _rich._ Socially prominent, too, probably, if she goes to the trouble to dress so well, put so many pins in her perfectly-swept hair. And the police just gave up?

As if they'd asked, Mrs. Solo looks up, mouth creased into a wry smile. There's something dangerous, even poisonous, about that dry smile; Rey shivers. That smile could see to it that you died slowly. “I believed at the time that the police thought it would _embarrass_ me to have my son publicly declared a suicide. That by leaving his case there, they were doing me a favor.” She looks back down at the picture, her face and voice gone distant and blank in an instant. “I don't believe that anymore. Not that, exactly. And I told Han so. I think that's what got him so... upset. So upset he ran for Vegas without kissing me goodbye.”

The ceiling fan thumps faintly, a soft rhythm that soothes none of them. “I told Han that I had made inquiries into the bar where Ben got into a fight. It's called Mo’s Jewel.” She raises her eyes deliberately from her son's portrait to Poe's face. His hands are clenched and he's paler than pity. “I think you may have heard of it.”

His voice is quiet. “Mrs. Solo.”

“I know you sent Pío Mattachine literature, Paco.” Gentle and unwavering, she keeps her eyes on his. “You know what kind of bar Mo’s Jewel is.”

“Yes.”

“The police did not see fit to tell me,” she says icily, and turns back to the picture, to the boy with the dark eyes of a cornered animal. “I would like to find out what else I don’t know about my son’s _disappearance.”_

It’s not clear to Rey, from the way she stresses the word, whether she says it so she doesn’t have to say _death,_ or because she really thinks he might come back. She looks at Poe from the corner of her eye. He thinks Ben Solo is dead; Rey can tell. He looks at that photo and he sees a death he’s seen, that he thinks could have been his. But his grief isn’t proof, not any more than Leila Solo’s hopes are.

Poe bites his lip. His almost-godmother rises to her feet with a rustle of green silk. She holds out her hands to him, small in their spotless gloves. The tremor in them is barely detectable. "Please," she says. “Please help me look for my son.” Rey doesn’t realize that her hands are clenched in the folds of her skirt until Poe nods, and she feels herself let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Resistencia Street** is a fictional mash-up of several streets in Los Angeles between Echo Park Blvd and the point where Sunset comes to the 110 Freeway. **Santa Teresa** is also fictional, a pseudonym used by midcentury crime author Ross Macdonald (and later, Sue Grafton) for a real place where I happened to grow up. I use it as a hat-tip, and also because it lets me feel freer to fictionalize geography and compress history.
> 
>  **[Adoro a mi tierra](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_a0_tO1_Rk)** , (“I Adore My Land”) sung by Flor Sylvestre, was a huge hit of the late 40s and early 50s.
> 
>  **Askari** means _soldier_ in Arabic, and was the word a number of European nations used for African-born troops of colonial powers, much like _sepoy_ in the Indian subcontinent.
> 
>  **New Chinatown,** currently usually known just as [Chinatown,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown%2C_Los_Angeles) used to be Little Italy; the original Chinatown (as in the movie of that name) was razed in the 1930s. It’s just east of Chavez Ravine. If you’re not well acquainted with the history of Los Angeles, I recommend reading [a bit about](https://latinousa.org/2017/11/01/remembering-communities-buried-center-field/) [the history of Chavez Ravine.](https://www.scpr.org/news/2017/10/31/77135/remembering-dodger-stadium-when-it-was-chavez-ravi/) Not for the story, just because it's not a bad thing to know about.
> 
>  **The Mattachine Society** was an early gay-rights organization of self-described “homophiles,” founded in 1951 in Los Angeles. They were somewhat exclusive, not as a matter of deliberate policy but as a matter of social segregation; Poe would probably not be invited to join because he would not have gone to the “right” schools. But they [publicly distributed literature](http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/HRC/exhibition/stage/stage_6.html) and [fought police entrapment.](http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/images/Mattachine.pdf)
> 
> Mrs. Solo’s suit is a custom piece by Charles James, like [this one in the Met.](https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/api/collection/v1/iiif/156943/1349907/restricted)  
> Rey’s shoes are probably cheaper versions of [these.](https://2lth8w1uv77536l8d72pqh10-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/1954-McCalls-kitten-heel-shoes-350x422.jpg)
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/LinearAO3) and [Tumblr.](https://linearla.tumblr.com/)


	2. A Vincent Black Knight 1954

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s too clean. No real biker could have made it to Barstow with his cuffed jeans so blue and his leather jacket so black and shining; he should be coated in yellow-white Mojave dust. He’s wearing a real, practical helmet, though, not a Brando-style cap — a hard, modern black shell that covers him nape-to-brow. The big aviator shades that hide his eyes strike her as a wise choice, too. But then she sees his bike and takes an involuntary step forward. “Is that — ?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of languages other than English come into play in this story. When there's dialogue in a language that the POV character understands, I'll represent it with English in <angle brackets>. This will spare you the worst of my linguistic flailings.
> 
> This chapter was given an invaluable beta-read by [Casey](https://twitter.com/caseydoesfandom), aka [lifeofsnark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeofsnark/pseuds/lifeofsnark). I am very grateful.

Alone in the office, Finn watches through the blinds as Rey eases the old ‘46 Chevy they share down the steep slope and onto the boulevard. He waves back as she waves her hand, in its beige driving glove, out the driver’s side window at him, then turns off the light and walks into the back room, where Poe has left the cheap silk purse on the table and the cashbox spilled out on the floor. He puts the scattered cash away neatly, and lays the contents of the purse out on the table. 

The Golden Dragon matchbook, as mentioned. The empty envelope of a letter from French Indochina, addressed to Thai Cô Hoa, with a March 15 postmark obscuring its pretty woodcut stamp. A pamphlet of what looks like poetry in a language Finn can't read, but which he assumes is her native tongue. A racing form for Santa Anita, with a single check mark beside the time of a Saturday race. And a laundry stub with "26/4" written on it.

That's promising. Huxley was a fool to try the restaurant. Finn knows the Golden Dragon; it's not some little sandwich counter. It’s a big-city operation, with multiple waiters in multiple shifts seeing a whole shifting galaxy of patrons every day. The odds whoever Huxley buttonholed this morning would remember one girl who couldn't even have been a regular... well, it's a lucky thing for him he has the money to pay someone who knows better. 

A laundry, though — at a laundry, they know who you are. They’ve seen the labels in your clothes. Sometimes you have to leave a name. Maybe even an address. He looks at the stub again. Lucky Peacock Laundry is on West College Street, barely a mile from the office. Though, of course, Rey has the car.

Finn looks again at the picture Huxley brought them. Rose is almost in the background; the photograph is dominated by a heavy white man in a rattan chair, glaring into the camera as if it's failed him. Behind him, Finn's client in a linen suit, and a tall woman with squared shoulders and a haughty look. The wife? A sister? Finn can't say. Huxley holds his chin high, with his hands behind him, as if it were a military portrait, instead of a family snap. Beside the three whites, Rose looks tiny. Finn examines her carefully: smooth, round cheeks, a small chin and mouth, hair that curls widely back on itself like mattress springs. A figure a cruder man than him might call a nice armful. Shadowed lashes on eyes which aren’t turned demurely down but fixed, defiantly, straight out. _The hair will make her memorable,_ he thinks, and looks again at her fierce dark eyes.

* * *

Poe has his own car, and since Mrs. Solo came by train and taxi, that’s what he takes her downtown in. She sits in the passenger seat, watching as Poe moves them smoothly through the lunch-hour traffic. He'd invited her to sit in the back, just like she had when he was a child, when his mother was the one driving. But she insisted on the passenger seat. She faces away from him, watching the streets go by. _It would have taken Ben Solo thirty, forty minutes to drive here from the University of California. But I've gone further, to get what I wanted. To get away from people I didn’t want to know I wanted it._

"Don't know how long it's been since someone called me Paco," he says to Mrs. Solo, so he doesn't have to think about what she's thinking. "Mostly I go by my call sign. Poe. To my friends. Have since the war."

"It's been almost a decade, since the war."

He hears the reproach. _So long and you never came home._ "It really took me all kinds of places. Showed me all kinds of people. And I found Finn and Rey; those kids have been underfoot ever since." He says it lightly; he doesn’t expect her to believe that pretty things like the two of them would follow him around the world just for the pleasure of his company.

"Finn is the young black man?" She's facing him now. "Are you — and he — "

"No," he says. If he didn't have to drive, if he could look at her face, he might know whether or not he could say _We used to be, but we aren't anymore. Maybe we never really were. It didn't mean to him what it meant to me, and we fell apart like a cheap paperback._ But even if he thought she'd understand, he can't do that to Finn.

"He and Miss Jaffa, then?"

"No, not them either." That, at least, isn’t a crime in California. He puts the breaks on, signaling to the guy behind him before he turns into shadows of the Pershing Square underground lot. "We're about two blocks from the Jewel here, Mrs. Solo. You should stay in the car."

"Why? Am I not allowed in?"

"It's not about allowed. It's about whether they're gonna want to talk. It might be a bit of a trick for me as it is; I'm not really the type, at this bar."

She opens her mouth, and shuts it again. He can tell she hates waiting here; Leila Solo wants with every fiber of her being to march in and shake whoever she can find until they give her answers. But she’s too smart for it. She just sits up a little straighter, folding her hands over her pocketbook. He leaves her in the darkness of the lot, and wonders if boys like Ben hunt here, coming out of Mo’s to lean against pillars and put their feet up on bumpers.

"We're closed," the white man behind the counter tells him. He's big, with dark hair and rounded face on a square frame. The hair is carefully combed away from a parting over his left ear.

"I'm not looking for a drink," Poe says, and modulates his tone and posture carefully. "Just… information."

The man behind the bar puts down his dishrag. The up-and-down look he gives Poe is not flattering, but Poe doesn't need it to be. He just needs him to see who he is.

“Absolute code?” the bartender asks, suspicious.

"I'm a P.I.," he says, in a believe-it-or-not tone, and flashes the photostat of his investigator’s license to prove it. "I'm following a case. The guy’s already been made, so I’m not keeping his secrets. Otherwise, yeah, absolute code. On my honor. You been working here a long time?"

"Is ten years a long time?"

Poe slides the picture of Ben over a dry part of the bar. "Three years ago. This kid beat somebody with a pool cue. Knocked him cold. Remember it?"

The big man picks up the photo with a soapy hand, and Poe winces internally. "Christ. Yeah. I remember. Haven't seen him since, though, and I'd throw him out if I did. We don't need that kind of noise."

Poe takes the photo back as quickly as politeness will let him. "Of course. Had he been in before?”

“I’d seen him. Tipped well.”

“Was he a regular brawler?"

"No. We don't tolerate that in here." His tone suggests that he imagines things work differently at Poe's kind of bar, and he returns to his washing. "You want rough stuff, you take your chances out back. He'd never pulled any crap like that before."

"So he was quiet?"

"A wallflower. Wasn't even playing pool; he yanked the cue." He gestures towards the back. The pool table sits in darkness, but Poe can guess how it's lit at night, how the hustlers stand to play, where the hawks stand to watch.

"Do you know what it was about? What set him off?"

“I got enough to worry about without listening in on customers. ‘51 was a bad year for cops.”

Poe nods. The barkeep might not be the best man to ask about this. Mo’s Jewel doesn’t have women for cover; if the police were to raid, the only chance would be a dash out the back, and the man behind the bar would be the last to make it. “Thanks,” he says, stepping back from the bar. He might have to come back at night somehow, find a regular who’ll talk to him. “Good luck.”

“It was an older guy.” Poe stops. The bartender continues, eyes on the glasses, “A chickenhawk. He was putting the moves on a fresh hustler. Maybe the kid was jealous; I don’t know. Like I say, I wasn’t listening. But the chickenhawk wasn’t from around here; we don’t encourage them. But we had to put him on the street for the medics and when he came to he told them he was down from Santa Teresa.”

His head spinning, Poe tips his hat and the bartender, too. He returns to the car with his mind ticking furiously. _A chickenhawk? Lots of people don’t like older men leering at young ones; it’s a bad look. But to beat him unconscious for it? And he was from Santa Teresa. Could that possibly be a coincidence?_

“Well?” Mrs. Solo asks him as soon as he opens the door.

“Did you get all Ben’s stuff from the University? There’s nothing in storage down here?”

“No,” she says, frowning, “it’s all in his old room at the ranch.”

“Great,” Poe says, starting the car. “Then we don’t have to stop on our way back up the coast.”

* * *

Half the world is made of light. Or anyway the glare makes it seem that way, as Rey turns up Cajon Pass on Route 66; the sun drives straight down between the hills and throws white light up from the bleached Portland concrete, from the hood of the car, from the sandy turf along the roadside. Rey starts to squint, and then reminds herself that she is a modern, American woman now, with money and a car: there are four tens in her wallet, and she has sunglasses. She doesn’t need to squint. The sunglasses are cat-eyed, and sweat paints her temple where the smooth plastic of their frames lies against her skin. She rolls the window up to save her white dress from the dust, turns up the fan, and lets her foot get heavy on the gas.

But when she comes out of the pass and into the Mojave, flat and pale gold, laced along the ground with bristling Spanish bayonet and low wooly daisies, torn by tumbleweed, and pierced, in the distance, by a towering Joshua tree, all of it baking under the endless sky — she forgets about her sunglasses, and squints by instinct against the blazing light.

Maybe she’ll always be the desert’s daughter.

* * *

On West College Street, Finn stops on a corner to pick up a discarded newspaper. He tears out one page, and folds it up to the size of a normal sheet of letter paper, then in thirds again. He tucks it into the empty envelope from Rose’s purse, and puts the envelope in his inner pocket, beside her photo, before he goes down the stairs and into the laundry.

Walking into the Lucky Peacock is like walking inside a tea kettle. The air is so full of steam that for a moment Finn is afraid he won't be able to breathe. Then the cloud thins a little and he sees a pretty young woman behind the counter, wrapping a stack of neatly-folded clothes into a brown paper package. Because the bigger clothes, trousers and shirts, are on the bottom of the stack, and the socks and underwear on the top, the package has the curved profile of a scone.

He can tell she saw him, but she doesn't pause in her wrapping, dipping her little finger into a pot of paste and securing the edges with little dabs. He takes off his hat, hoping the ambient steam doesn’t take the crease out of the crown. "Yes?" she says, not looking up.

He slides the stub across the counter. She leans over the package to look at it, then up at him.

"Where did _you_ get this?"

"I don't want her clothes," he says, putting up his hands. "I’m just looking for her.” 

“Who?”

He pulls out the girl’s photograph. “Have you seen her lately?”

She looks briefly at the photo, hands still busy with paste and paper. “I don’t know that girl.”

Maybe that’s true and maybe it’s not. “Some people call her Rose. Some people call her Thai Cô Hoa.” He shows her the envelope, keeping his thumb over the cancelled stamp. “I have a letter for her.”

The woman gives the envelope a long, dubious look. “Thai Cô Hoa.” She says the name _Hwa._

Finn takes a risk. He leans in a little and says in French, “<I need to see to it that this reaches her. If you haven’t seen her, do you know where I can find her family?>”

She stops wrapping. Her eyes go wide, then narrow in suspicion. “<Who is it from?>”

“<I don’t know,>” he shrugs. “<That’s not my business.>” Truly, it’s not. “<I went to her boss’s house, but she wasn’t there. The laundry ticket was in her purse.>”

The woman takes a deep breath of the steamy air, searching his face with her eyes. He tries to keep his expression as honest as possible. Finally she exhales.

“<I don’t know Hoa. That ticket is for her sister’s laundry. Thai Cô Bê. I won’t tell you where she lives, but she works at the racetrack. If you go there, someone will give your letter to her for you.>”

“<The racetrack? Santa Anita?>” That explains the racing form. “<Where does she work there?>”

“<She’s a jockey,>” the woman says proudly. She sees his dubious expression and lifts her chin. “<She is the best. The white boys try to scare her off, but they’re failures.>”

Finn met a man in a bar once who used to be a jockey, back when, he said, all the jockeys were black men. He’d had a long scar across the side of his head, and walked with a limp. _Maybe now they’re trying to “scare” her,_ he thinks, _but it won’t end there._

She nods, like she knows what he’s thinking. “<Oh, they try to hurt her, too. Push her close to the rail in the race. Knock her off the horse. But she’s too good a rider; they know only one way to ride, astride, but she can ride on the side, too; they think she’s unseated but she stays on. And off the track, she carries a gun.>”

Her tone lets him know that that’s a warning to him, too. He nods in acknowledgment. “<You said her name was — ?>”

“<Bê. But they are Americans.>” She gives him a disdainful look. “<They hear _Thai Cô,_ they spell it T-I-C-O.>” She dips her finger in the paste again, returning to English. “She has a race today. I have five dollars on her with the man on the corner. Bet too, if you’re smart.”

He bows to her, in the French style. “Thank you.” She doesn’t acknowledge the bow, or the thanks. _Half a mile to Union Station, and a bus to Santa Anita every half hour,_ he thinks, turning away. He checks his watch, and he’s almost out the door and into the dry air when she calls after him:

“Don’t forget the ticket! She can’t get her laundry without it.”

* * *

Rey stops for gas in Barstow. There’s hardly more to the town than its filling stations, but she needs to get out of the car, and she wants a cold drink. The fan can only do so much. She parks the Chevy by the sign for the railway. _Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe._ Poe used to sing that song; she remembers his voice in the dark alleys, and her own fascination with the unfamiliar music, the strange American singing it. As she walks towards the little general store, she hums her favorite to herself, the one Poe used to sing to her with a wink, slow and slinky and teasing:

_I got a gal who's always late_  
_Any time we have a date_  
_But I love her_  
_Yes, I love her..._

There's Coca Cola in the icebox; as she hands over her nickel, she looks again at the picture of her quarry tucked into her pocketbook. It’s a newspaper clipping, showing a tall man with a lop-sided smile, a flat cap, and a proud hand on the bridle of a thoroughbred. _Pictured: Winner, Falcon, with owner and trainer Hans Solo._

Rey snaps her pocketbook shut, and lays the cold glass of the bottle to the back of her neck as she walks, letting her head droop so that the cold drops condensing on her skin roll into her hair as well as down her spine. It puts her gaze on the ground, which is perhaps why she gets so close to the man in the leather jacket without seeing him. His shadow on the dusty pavement falls at her feet and she jerks her head up.

He’s too clean. No real biker could have made it to Barstow with his cuffed jeans so blue and his leather jacket so black and shining; he should be coated in yellow-white Mojave dust. He’s wearing a real, practical helmet, though, not a Brando-style cap — a hard, modern black shell that covers him nape-to-brow. The big aviator shades that hide his eyes strike her as a wise choice, too. Then she sees his bike, and she takes an involuntary step forward. “Is that — ?”

He stands aside so she can see the solution to the mystery of his clean clothes. The motorcycle is fully faired, the engine and the back wheel both encased in shining black fiberglass. Narrow black wings extend to the sides of the front wheel, and a transparent shield slants up over the bars. In her mind’s eye she sees the Norton 16H that Uther-Platt didn’t trust her with until she’d proved herself three times over; it would sit next to this machine like a mangy, whimpering stray beside a bloody-mouthed wolf.

“It’s a Vincent,” he says, but she knew that. His voice is dark and thick and molten, like Levantine coffee. “A Black Knight. This year’s model.”

“The engine’s almost 1000cc, isn’t it?” she breathes. She reads the magazines. Touches the pictures of the beautiful fast things she’ll never be able to afford.

“998,” he says, and then: “You want to take a ride on her?”

 _“Could I?”_ Vincents are made by fanatics and scientists. Vincents cost as much as cars. And Vincents set land-speed records out on the Utah Salt Flats.

“Sure,” he says, and she holds out an eager hand for the keys at the same time that he throws his long leg over the black leather saddle.

“Oh,” she says. “I thought you meant — ”

“You wanted to drive?” He sounds surprised, but not derisive. His voice is a gentle rumble, a lightning storm ten miles off.

“I used to take a Norton into the desert.”

“It’s a bit of a different thing from a Norton.”

“I’m a fast learner.”

“You’re wearing a dress,” he points out.

She snorts, looking down at the neat white pleats of her sundress. He thinks that’s an obstacle? She’s about to tell him how very little of a problem it would be when another bike rolls up beside them. Rey sees the BMW badge and wills herself not to snarl. _The war is over,_ she tells herself. _It's all over now._ A young Asian man, as dusty as Rey thought a biker ought to be, jerks his chin. No helmet for him; he’s got the cap. “Ready to go, Ren?”

“Yeah, sure,” the man with the Vincent says. He doesn’t move to start his bike. He doesn’t turn his head away from Rey. “Where’re you headed?”

“Going to Vegas to find a man.”

His lips narrow. “They’re not experiencing a shortage.” They’re notable, his lips. Lips to write home about. Red as sunset.

“A particular man. Are you going there too?”

“Coming from.”

Impulsively, she takes the photo from her pocketbook and holds it out. “His name is Hans Solo. Have you seen him?”

There’s a long pause. She can’t tell if he’s looking at the photo or not. She can’t see his eyes at all. The BMW man says something low in Japanese. The man on the Vincent replies sharply in the same language. Rey tries not to look startled. _I can hardly see his face — I shouldn't have assumed —_

“Solo’s not in Vegas,” he says. His voice is tight. 

“How do you know?”

“He’s never in Vegas. He’s at Santa Anita.”

"He told his wife he was going to Vegas."

"Well he lied," he snarls. He insert the key and rolls his bike forward off its kickstand, and Rey takes a step backwards. "He's at Santa Anita." He still hasn’t started the engine.

“Come on, Ren; we’re late,” the other man says. 

“Can’t keep Oka-san waiting,” the man on the Black Knight says dryly, not turning his head. Both of them sound perfectly American in English, entirely Californian. “Han Solo’s always at Santa Anita. Living in his favorite version of the past. Ask for him in the owner’s box.”

“You know him?”

He kicks the Vincent alive with a single stroke. The engine turns over with shockingly little sound. She hears him as he pushes away from the curb, though he barely raises his voice: “I owe the Solos one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **University of California** — When Ben would have been in college, Berkeley and UCLA were still one school; his campus would have been officially called "the University of California, Southern Division."  
>  **Absolute code** — To be absolute code, or on absolute code, is to be committed to the gay community’s secrecy. You don't out me, I won't out you, nobody outs anybody.  
>  **photostat** — An early version of the photocopy. Very expensive and inconvenient, used mostly for official paperwork. Poe's actual license would be on file in Sacramento.  
>  **made** — Outed.  
>  **Chickenhawk** — An older man with an interest in much younger men.  
>  **Faired** — Motorcycle fairing is covering placed on motorcycle parts to reduce air drag or protect the bike or rider.
> 
> Pershing Square, like many places in Los Angeles, was beautiful once, and then got turned into a parking lot, and is now... pretty good again? It's still a parking lot, I think, but there's [an actual park](http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshuagunther/8637018787/in/photostream/) on top of it.
> 
> Post-war Los Angeles was incredibly paranoid about gayness, and gay men in particular; that paranoia and the visibility and activism of the Mattachine Society (and its sister organization, the Daughters of Bilitis) fueled each other. At one point the city council proposed to criminalize _handshakes_ between men "in order to reach these homosexuals." A new "war on crime" police chief launched a special push against gay bars and bathhouses in 1951.
> 
> "Spanish bayonet" is the common name for a number of yucca species; the one I'm thinking of looks like [this](https://www.laspilitas.com/images/grid24_12/10907/images/plants/yucca/yucca-baccata.jpg). They are incredibly sharp, and the tips of their spikes can break off under your skin. Sometimes they get tall but mostly they sit on the ground waiting to murder you if you trip. Woolly daisies look like [this.](https://calphotos.berkeley.edu/imgs/512x768/0000_0000/0205/0545.jpeg) Joshua trees look like [this](http://photowalk.mostlyfiction.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Joshua-Tree-in-Bloom-1705.jpg); they are endangered by climate change and general human stupidity and I am mad about it.
> 
> This isn't uniformly true, I think, but Vietnamese names often go [father's family name] [mother's family name] [given name]. Hoa means "flower."
> 
> Black jockeys used to dominate horse racing in the US. What happened? [If you guessed "racist violence," you are correct.](https://www.npr.org/2016/05/07/477175260/the-forgotten-history-of-african-american-jockeys)
> 
> 🎶 ["On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmBKHSZ1pcU) was a top hit of 1945, and ["Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LGl70VGvmg) was the B-side of hit "G.I. Jive." 🎶
> 
> I need you to look at a [Vincent Black Knight,](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-myvyua6JV0g/Ua1zFW7PMnI/AAAAAAAAD3s/N1M1zqM1BO4/s1600/07-vincent-hrd-black-knight1_jpg-1000x6711.jpg) please. It looks kind of crazy now; in the 50s it looked so sci-fi that when they made a _1984_ movie in 1956, they had the Thought Police riding Black Knights. The [Norton 16H](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Qr2u3Slq0CM/maxresdefault.jpg) was the standard motorcycle of the British military from 1911 to 1954. It had a 490ccs engine, about 15 bhp (British Horsepower). Its top speed was around 68 mph. [Finn and Rey's Chevrolet](https://ccpublic.blob.core.windows.net/cc-temp/listing/71/5020/167581-1948-chevrolet-stylemaster-thumb.jpg) has an engine with around 85 bhp, and a top speed around 80. How fast can a Vincent Black Knight go? Wouldn't Rey like to know.
> 
> [A replica of the Bell 500-TX helmet,](https://images.esellerpro.com/2189/I/280/519/11716-Bell-Custom-500-Motorcycle-Helmet-Black-Flake-1600-1.jpg) the first 3/4 helmet, first produced, like the Black Knight, in 1954. I know it looks like I set this story in this year just for the motorcycle gear, but I promise that's not the case.
> 
>  
> 
> [Rey's white summer dress.](https://66.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lpgqf5q9Zy1qbkn6io1_500.jpg)
> 
>  
> 
> I am on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/LinearAO3) and [Tumblr](http://linearla.tumblr.com) both, heaven help me.


	3. The Girl Jockey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The warming ring turns out to be boxed in, hidden from the greedy eyes of gamblers and tipsters. Finn stands in the shadow of a high post as a sorrel filly canters the perimeter, unsaddled. A girl in a helmet stands in the center with the lunge line. She whistles a rising note, and Sleeping Beauty breaks eagerly into a full gallop, then whistles again, high to low, and changes her hold on the line; with a snort and an irritable toss of her golden mane, the horse slows.
> 
> “What do you want?” Rose’s sister is taller than she is, he’d guess, but he still has several inches on her. She whistles again, a neutral tone, and pulls the filly to her with the line. The horse comes, still shaking her head in annoyance. The jockey doesn’t take her eyes off Finn. “If you’re from the Irving Boys, take it up with Mr. Solo. If you’re from the HUTT, you should know better than to come here with five minutes until the start.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of horse racing terms in this! Feel free to skip down to the bottom and read the end notes first. Also, quick content notes: aside from the overall warning for period-typical racism, Finn's POV uses the term "Chicano" which is respectful in current parlance but was slightly less so at the time, and, this being a horse race, there is some cruelty to animals (pretty mild, given the circumstances).

The bus to Santa Anita is sweltering. Finn forces the window as far down as it’ll go, and strips off his jacket, tie, and hat. Tying his handkerchief around his head to protect his conk, he sets to rolling up his sleeves and running his mouth over the accent he needs. Nobody notices him; everyone else on the bus is glued to their racing forms, or counting and re-counting what’s in their wallet. It’s not as crowded as the next bus will be, but that means that these are the hardened gamblers, not the company men in search of an afternoon flutter. These are the ones who’ll bet on anything, coin tosses or cock fights or children scrapping in the schoolyard. Finn has an uncomfortable feeling, like a living passenger on a ghost ship, and he’s grateful when the bus sets them all down under a stand of towering palms, in sight of the racing park’s gates.

He punches the crown of his hat up and carries his coat in front of him as if it belonged to someone else. He can’t do much about his white pants, but he pushes his sleeves further up his elbows, and slips an extra button at his neck. He makes his walk humble and hesitant as he approaches the white woman in the Information booth at the gate.

“Pardon me, ma’am.” He tips his hat, and prays he sounds as much like a lost country boy as he means to. He hoists his coat just perceptibly, a faint suggestion of a garment to deliver. “Where ought a fellow — ” 

She barely gives him a look before she interrupts. “Wrong gate. You gotta go around back to Baldwin Ave.”

His mouth tightens, but she doesn’t see him; she isn’t looking. _Of course. If they could make a front door for the ocean, they would, just to send the rest of us around to the back._ “The jockeys are back that-a way?”

“The valets’ room will be on your left. Blue door.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

It’s a long walk, the length of the park and more, and the sun bears down, but there’s a nice breeze — enough to stir the palm trees high overhead and cool the sweat inside his collar, but not brisk enough to blow up dust. Once he’s on Baldwin, he times his approach to the gate carefully, stepping in just as a horse trailer is arriving. He helps direct it cleanly around the corner; the man in the cab assumes he works there, and the people who _do_ work there assume he’s jumped off the back to help.

Once the trailer’s in, he touches his hat quickly to the driver, and ducks around the corner to the left. He squares his shoulders, and lengthens his stride, the picture of urgency and purpose. It won’t get him in anywhere he absolutely isn’t supposed to be, but it’ll let him in most anywhere he’d be _probable._ He passes the valets’ room without looking in; he doubts Thai Cô Bê has one, and asking for her there will only get him in trouble. He doesn’t expect she feels too welcome socializing in the jockeys’ lounge, so he continues past that, too, until he finds the tack room. He pauses for a moment to knock his poor hat back into shape before he walks in. Three grooms in long barn dusters and flat caps are shooting the breeze in quiet voices, trading horse tales. Two are black, one Chicano, and they all go silent, frowning, when he enters; it’s obvious to them that he doesn’t belong anywhere near here.

“I’m looking for the girl jockey,” he says, comfortably back with a Los Angeles accent. “Got a message about her sister.”

There’s a collective hesitation. “She’s in the warming ring with Sleeping Beauty,” says one of the black men, reluctantly. “I can go get her.”

“I can spare you the trip, if you’ll point me.”

“I mean, I’d just as soon, but you’re gonna have to turn out your pockets first.”

“What for?” Finn asks, taken aback.

“We can’t let you in there with a knife or some crap,” another groom says scornfully. “We had dew this morning and Sleeping Beauty’s a known webfoot.”

Finn’s got no idea what the hell that’s meant to mean, but he grits his teeth and shakes out his coat and pants pockets for them. There are laughs at Rose’s silk purse, and Finn glares. “Told you I had a message from her sister, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, I remember,” the man who’d insisted he turn his pockets out says placatingly, and Finn takes the moment of restoring order to his clothes to ask casually,

“Have you seen the sister recently, by the way? Small little thing, got big half-curls by her face?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen her,” the first man says. “Not since the Malibu Stakes, though.”

“When was that?”

Stunned silence fills the room, as if Finn had asked them when Christmas was. “It was December 7th,” the Chicano man finally says, over-enunciating a little like he thinks Finn might be slow in the head. “Eddie Arcaro booted A Gleam home in a close fit.”

Finn hates it when people say things he can’t understand. He gives a nod like he remembers it, now that they mention it. “Right, right. So how do I get to the warming ring?”

* * *

Rey knew the picture Mrs. Solo gave her must be out-of-date. She’s still a little shocked to find how old the man she finds in the owners’ box is. His face is heavily lined, and his hair is dead white. But it’s still clearly him, the lop-sided smile showing faintly through his look of scorn as he lectures the man in the next seat. “Chuy, Chuy, you never understood; a horse isn’t like a boat — ”

“Mr. Solo?” 

The owners’ box is shaded by big umbrellas, but he puts his hand over his eyes as swings around in his seat, wincing as if his eyes hurt. It’s clear even before she takes in the little forest of bottles under his seat that he’s a few sheets to the wind. “Who’s asking?”

“My name’s Reina Jaffa. Your wife asked me to find you.”

“Well, you’ve found me; congratulations.”

“She’d like you to come home, please.”

“She said that?” he scoffs. “And you believed her?”

“<Don’t be an idiot, Solo,>” the man beside him says in Spanish. 

“Too late for that now, Chuy!”

“<Don’t I know it.>” Chuy’s a tall man, with skin polished a ruddy chestnut by the sun and a beard the likes of which Rey hasn’t seen since she came to America. He wears his hair in a braid; it’s thick and black but threaded through with white and silver; his temples are entirely grey. He raises a thick eyebrow wearily at Rey, communicating clearly: _you have no idea how much of this I put up with._

“Your wife is very concerned about you — ”

“That’s a first — ”

“<Solo, you have the brains of a donkey. If Leila didn’t care about you, you’d be long dead by now.>”

That seems to pull Mr. Solo up short. He stares at Chuy as if he’s been betrayed, then back at Rey as if calling her to witness his betrayal. He makes a sort of extended wordless grumbling sound, and then announces, triumphantly, “I’m too drunk to drive home.”

“I can wait until you’re sober,” Rey says, and makes herself comfortable in the next seat. She gets paid a day rate, and sitting in the shade for a horse race beats the hell out of most things she’s ever done to put food on the table. Maybe she’ll even have another cold drink.

* * *

Poe eases the car down the Conejo Grade as gently as he can and lets it coast through the fields and orchards of Camarillo. The heavy scent of the flowering orange and lime trees make the warm air feel warmer. Mrs. Solo observes the white blossoms in silence. She hasn’t said anything since they got on the 101, since he finished telling her what he’d learned in the bar. It had been good to be driving then, and not to have to look at her as he heard the hope rising in her voice as she asked, “If he was a wallflower, does that mean he didn’t really — ?”

Not to have to look at her face as he answered. “It’s a long way to drive for a mid-shelf gin, Mrs. Solo.”

In Camarillo, she moves restlessly in her seat, craning her neck and he thinks maybe she’ll say something. But she doesn’t break her silence until the next town, Oxnard, among the strawberry fields. “If you can find him, this older man. What do you think he might tell you?”

“Maybe nothing.” He has to be honest with her. “It’s possible that, from his point of view, a kid attacked him out of nowhere, and then everything went black. But maybe Ben said something, or he said something that set Ben off. Or maybe he was someone Ben knew, or had a mutual acquaintance with. If Ben knew other men in Santa Teresa, he might have spoken to someone after he was expelled.”

She inhales deeply, and so does he. The fields smell of dirt, manure, and the green prickle of leaves. He doesn’t want to give her false hope, but he doesn’t need to root out and bludgeon every little bit of hope that might come to her. Let her breathe in the smell of growing things and imagine Ben leaving his car because he got into someone else’s. It might’ve happened. 

He finds his own breathing getting a little irregular as the highway curves back to the Pacific in Ventura. Not far to Santa Teresa now. He hasn’t been home in so long. But it still _is_ home; he still calls it that in his heart. It’s where he was born, where he was raised, where he enlisted. It’s where his mother is buried.

She’d died while he was deployed, off in Europe dropping pathfinders in Italy. By the time the news had reached him, she’d been in the ground for a week. He’d found a church and tried to make himself understood, weeping in English and Spanish and getting nowhere, until pantomime was enough to get the priest to give him a candle and leave him to pray alone. When the war was over, he lit candles for her in Rome, in Lourdes, in Jerusalem.

He’s never been to her grave.

He doesn’t believe in God.

Ventura falls behind them, and Leila Solo sits silently in the passenger seat, looking up at the dry golden hills and their steep, unstable sides, while he threads the car along the knife-edge of the rincón.

* * *

The warming ring turns out to be boxed in, hidden from the greedy eyes of gamblers and tipsters. Finn stands in the shadow of a high post as a sorrel filly canters the perimeter, unsaddled. A girl in a helmet stands in the center with the lunge line. She whistles a rising note, and Sleeping Beauty breaks eagerly into a full gallop, then whistles again, high to low, and changes her hold on the line; with a snort and an irritable toss of her golden mane, the horse slows.

“What do you want?” Rose’s sister is taller than she is, he’d guess, but he still has several inches on her. She whistles again, a neutral tone, and pulls the filly to her with the line. The horse comes, still shaking her head in annoyance. The jockey doesn’t take her eyes off Finn. “If you’re from the Irving Boys, take it up with Mr. Solo. If you’re from the HUTT, you should know better than to come here with five minutes until the start.”

 _Mr. Solo? Well. Isn’t that interesting._ But it’s not his case; he’ll let Rey and Poe know, of course, but he needs to find the maid and the blueprints. And whatever business these sisters are involved in, French is clearly closer to its heart than English. “<Are you Thai Cô Bê?>”

Maybe too close to the heart. She seizes the horse’s mane and takes rapid cover behind the mare’s shoulder. _“ <What do you want?>”_

He thinks fast. _Huxley was keen to keep the law in the dark. Bet she is too._ “<I’m just trying to keep the policemen out of it. Have you seen your sister lately?>”

“<My sister?>” She steps out from behind the horse, alarmed. “<What’s that about my sister?>”

Over the sound of her last word, there’s the harsh brass reveille of a trumpet. Finn jumps, recalled to things he prefers to avoid, and makes himself stand still. The filly snorts and tosses her mane excitedly, moving lightly from foot to foot. The jockey says something which is probably a curse, and then, pulling on the horse’s bridle, demands, “<Is my sister in trouble?>”

“<No, Mademoiselle, not to my knowledge. Not yet.>”

“<Then meet me again at the back gate to the mares’ barn number five after the race. I have to go weigh in.>”

Two grooms push past Finn to take charge of Sleeping Beauty, taking off her halter and outfitting her with her saddle and bridle. They are gentle and astonishingly fast, and the jockey pats the filly’s nose affectionately as she hurries off to the scales.

Finn trails the grooms as they lead the horse away. “She asked me if I was from the hut. What’s the hut?”

“H-U-T-T. Horsemen’s Union of Trainers and Tradesmen. They don’t like it that she rides in purse races. She shot the hat off one and we don’t hear from ‘em much anymore in the barns.” The groom shakes his head as he pats the horse’s neck. “Ponies don’t like gunshots. Poor bangtails.”

“Nobody keeps an eye out for you, do they?” they other asks the filly sympathetically. “Just us.”

Everyone for a mile around is moving towards the track, the race exerting a tidal pull. “When will it be over?” Finn calls after the grooms as they lead Sleeping Beauty through a gate and towards the starting chutes, and gets two contemptuous glances back.

“It’s never over ‘til it’s over.”

* * *

“ — now see Falcon — did I tell you about Falcon?”

“<You told her twice.>”

“Also your wife gave me a newspaper clipping.”

 _“Falcon_ could have left all these oat-guzzlers in the dust. Here they come, here’s the post parade. Now, which one’s your money on again?” Mr. Solo asks as the horses are lead out on the track, letting everyone see them walk, giving everyone a last minute to change their bets.

“I didn’t bet,” Rey tells him again.

“What?” He looks at her in wild surprise. Rey wonders if she should get him some more water.

“I came here to get you. Remember? Mrs. Solo sent me.” Behind the drunk man, Chuy groans and shakes his head.

“Well, sure, but — so? You didn’t even stop to drop a dollar against the iron men?”

“I’m on the job.”

“You could still have _fun.”_ He sounds affronted.

“I _am_ having fun. I watching the horses, and Mr. Baccarin bought me an agua fresca.” She raises her cup of jamaica at Chuy, who waves it off aimiably.

“But fine, sure, if you _were_ to lay money,” Hans says. His eyes return to the track and abruptly focus; he leans forward, intent. The announcer is declaiming long strings of meaningless facts about each horse over the PA system. “Which one of these would you bet on?”

Rey gamely leans in too, examining the horses as they’re led around the track with their jockeys astride them. “I don’t know… not that one with the white star. She picks up her feet too high; she’ll wear herself out.”

Mr. Solo makes a considering noise. “Mmm. Not a bad thought. They only have to go six furlongs today, though.”

“I really don’t know much about thoroughbreds,” Rey says, and then remembers that they are sitting in the owners’ box. “Does one of you own one of them?”

“<I have a half-share in Sleeping Beauty,>” Chuy says. “<Number 3.>”

“Which is why,” Hans says, pulling her attention back to the track with an outstretched arm, “you should have put money on her. Not ‘cause Chuy owns her. Because Chuy’s got a stake, and _I_ am Chuy’s friend, and so I fixed him up with the best jockey in Southern California. See that girl?” Rey peers, following his pointing finger and is startled to see that by _girl_ he means not the filly but the person riding. “It’s good to know horses,” Mr. Solo continues. “But if you want to pick a winner? Back the jockey, not the horse.”

Rey nods slowly, looking at the girl on Sleeping Beauty’s back. She’s Asian, and looks about Rey’s own age, 22 or 23. Her shoulders are back, and her gaze is fixed sternly between the horse’s ears. “What’s her name?”

“Oh, something she said I was no good at saying.” Mr. Solo rolls his eyes. “She told me I could call her Paige.” He frowns briefly, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. “What did you say your name was, again?”

“Reina Jaffa. But you can call me Rey.” She’s decided she likes him, this growling man who pretends to be sour.

“Rey o Reina?” Mr. Baccarin asks her, smiling. _King or queen?_ “<Which is it?>”

Rey grins back. “<I’m both.>”

“No wonder the princess sent you,” Hans sighs.

The track men are loading the horses into the starting chutes now. The last-minute bettors are rushing back to their seats, the last dust of the parade is settling, and the announcer’s voice rises over a growing silence as he spaces out his words. _Ladies… and… gentlemen… welcome again… to Santa Anita Park… and the Las… Flores… Handicap…_

“Watch Paige now,” Hans says, quiet and tense, licking his lips. “Won’t touch that pony with whip or spurs. Rides by hand. Best in the biz. Don’t worry, Chuy. Best in the biz.”

“<Who’s worried?>” Chuy growls back, but Rey can see his hand tighten around the empty bottle he’s holding. 

The crowd drops to almost total silence. Rey could swear she can hear the horses stamping as they wait.

The gates burst open. _And they’re off!_ the announcer roars. A dark chestnut darts down the track ahead of the rest. _Two’s in the lead! Two’s out in front —_

“<Three, three, three,>” Chuy mutters. “<You can do it.>” 

Rey looks for Sleeping Beauty and her jockey. Paige is bent low over the horse’s neck, high in her stirrups like all of them. Her gloves are fingerless, and her hands move lightly with the reins. She has a whip, but it’s laid across the pommel of her saddle. Her number’s placed her in the middle of the line, but as she chases the pack leader, she pulls her mount in towards the rail. She rises even higher in her seat, and Sleeping Beauty’s stride lengthens, moving frantically to cover the ground. The horses’s hooves batter the ground.

 _Three coming up!_ the announcer calls. _Seven and Three, coming up!_ Paige leans into the curve of the track; as the horses rocket towards around the bend towards the stands, she seems not to blink. Another horse is right beside her, gaining rapidly. It’s jockey shifts in his saddle, slicing at his mount with his whip, and as Rey watches in horror, he reaches out a hand to Sleeping Beauty’s reins.

_“He’s going to — ”_

_“Paige, Paige, c’mon Paige!”_ Hans Solo shouts over her cry, and at the same time, Paige’s whip flashes from her saddle and across the jockey’s reaching hand. She throws herself forward again; Rey sees that her mouth is open and wonders if she’s calling to the horse herself, pleading with it the same way every watcher is pleading. _Go, go, go._ Rey has no money in the race, no real stake in any of it, but she finds she’s praying, sweaty-palmed in the shade, for the filly with the golden mane and her ferocious black-eyed jockey.

They’re neck and neck, nose and nose, the golden mane and the black, the two jockeys in their black velvet helmets; no one breathes as they hurtle towards the finish. _Two and Three, Two and Three —_ the announcer hollers, gasping _— and Three, Three, Three! Three by a nose!_

They leap to their feet; Rey with a cheer, Hans with a shout, Chuy with a roar. The two men embrace, and Rey realizes for the first time exactly how big Mr. Baccarin is, more than a head taller than Mr. Solo. _Taller even than the man on the Black Knight,_ she thinks, remembering those long legs abruptly. She watches Hans and Chuy pound each other’s backs. _How did he know what he knew, and what does he owe the Solos?_ She wipes her palms and takes a drink of tart hibiscus to hide her suddenly troubled face.

* * *

He keeps his eye on his motorcycle as he checks into the motor court. Not that he imagines anyone would even guess that the casing can open, let alone how to do it. _Mr. Ren_ he writes in the registration book, and then, on a whim, lists his place of residence as Barstow, CA.

_Santa Rosa is the patron of gardens and family quarrels. Santa Monica is the patron of difficult marriages and disappointing children. Santa Teresa is the patron of sick people and those ridiculed for faith. Does the desert have a patron saint?_

“I’ll be here a week,” he tells the clerk, and gives him a fifty.

“Welcome to Santa Teresa,” the clerk says, handing back his change.

_She was looking for Hans Solo. San Judas Tadeo is the patron of lost causes._

* * *

Finn leans against the wall of mares’ barn number five, idly weaving strands of straw together, and listens to the sounds of the race breaking up. The successful bettors were the first wave he’d heard, rushing to claim their winnings. Now he hears, distantly, the trickle of losers; close by, the grooms are quiet as they lead the cooling horses into boxes. Finn wonders if horses know when they’ve lost.

Thai Cô Bê appears at the gate. She’s not dressed like a jockey anymore; she wears pretty black capri pants made of unrefined silk, and a loose modern shirt with a wide folded collar. Her hair is in a girlish ponytail. She has to be a strong woman, but she’s not a large one, and the weight of the big suitcase she’s carrying shows a little in the slant of her shoulders. She sets it down. “<Now. What about my sister?>”

Her tone is rough and businesslike, but her face, out from under the shadow of her riding helmet, is a little soft, a little fragile. Finn has already resolved to tell her something like the truth, but if he’d been wavering, the vulnerability he sees would convince him not to lie to her.

“<She took something from her employer and disappeared. He doesn’t want to involve the police. But he wants it back, what she took.>”

“<So he hired you to get it back. And who are you?>”

“<I’m a private investigator. He also wants to make sure she’s safe and well.>”

She doesn’t say anything to that, but she looks skeptical. He’d looked at the picture of Rose again, while she was racing, and the differences between the sisters are stark. What he notices most is the fear in Bê’s eyes. He remembers the black jockey he met, his limp and his scars.

“<Did you win?>” he asks her.

“<Yes.>” She doesn’t sound proud, just tired. His eyes move to her big suitcase.

“<Will you go on holiday now?>” Just as he says it, he remembers what precisely he’s looking for. Blueprints. Big sheets of heavy paper, best kept flat. She steps slightly in front of the suitcase and his neck prickles. “<When exactly did you last see your sister, Mademoiselle?>”

“Paige!” a man calls inside the barn. Her head whips around.

“<I have to go.>”

From the shadows of the barn, a tall white-haired man stumbles against the gate. “Paige? You there, Paige?”

“Coming, Mr. Solo.”

Mr. Solo leans over the gate, and then there’s a feminine footstep that Finn thinks he recognizes even before he sees Rey’s face, which lights up like a lamp when she sees him. 

It warms him, honestly, how happy she always is to see him. He’s happy to see her, too, and happy to see she found her man, even though — wasn’t he supposed to be in Las Vegas? But however happy they may both be, her enthusiasm can be _so awkward_ for him. He opens his eyes as wide as they can go, silently pleading with her not to say anything to him.

It takes her a moment, and even when she understands, she actually says, aloud, “Oh! Right!”

Finn despairs, but Mr. Solo comes to his rescue by, at exactly that moment, leaning against the gate at just the wrong angle, and falling. Rey, catching him, smothers herself, and Bê, rushing to help, seems not to notice what she said. As they set the white-haired man on his feet, Rey gives him an apologetic look.

“<I’ll speak to you later, Mademoiselle,>” he tells Thai Cô Bê, and walks away through the hay as loudly as he can. He stops, just inside Rey’s field of vision, raising a finger pointedly to his lips, and then jabbing his thumb at the big suitcase which the jockey is so protective of. Rey, with a quick grimace of shame, gives a nod.

“Whadya say, Paige?” Mr. Solo is asking. “Ready to go? Blue Hammer misses you. You should work on her anyway.” He raises his head. “Oh. Right. Paige, this is Rey. The princess sent her to fetch me. Rey, this is Paige. Paige is gonna win the Santa Anita Derby for me come Sunday, isn’t that right, Paige?”

“I’ll try, Mr. Solo.”

“Never you mind about _try,_ you and Blue Hammer just do it; I know you can.”

“All right, Mr. Solo.”

“Rey here is _insisting_ I wait until I’m sober to let me drive home. But we can go soon.”

Hell. Bê’s going to drive off with Mr. Solo and the suitcase — maybe Rey can search the case — he has to let her know what he needs — but Finn watches Rey’s eyes get wide, and then narrow, and then wide again, the way they do when she has an idea. “Listen, Mr. Solo,” she starts.

“Han. Call me Han. I always tell Paige; she never listens.”

“Han, then. You’re _very_ drunk, Han. Let me drive you home, all right? I’ll drive you and Paige, and then I’ll call a — a friend of mine, to pick me up, okay?”

“Sure,” Mr. Solo says, shrugging. “Sure, if the princess wants me back that bad.”

“You’ll have to lead the way; I don’t know where your car is. After you, Miss Tico.” As she ushers them back through the barn, Rey shuts the gate behind them with a clang that neatly covers the sound of her car keys hitting the ground. Finn counts fifteen slow seconds on his watch before he runs quietly forward to retrieve them and follow.

* * *

The 101 cuts away from the ocean, and Poe crosses the Santa Teresa county line. Here he is. Almost home. The avocado orchards of Astillero throw long shadows. He tries not to shiver, and speeds up without really meaning to. Leila Solo stirs in her seat, and turns towards him. She clears her throat, and squares her shoulder. “Francisco,” she says. “Poe. I need to ask you something. I don’t know if you can answer. But I have to ask.”

“Yes?” He swallows. “Go ahead.”

“When men are… like you.”

“Yes.” The orchards look like jungles, so thick and dark against the blue sky.

“Doctors say. I have read doctors saying. That it’s because of their mothers. Mothers who ruin their sons. Hold onto them too tightly. Do you think that’s true?”

He almost laughs, but he can see how frightened she is, braced like she’s facing a firing squad. “No. Doctors who say that don’t know what they’re talking about.” He throws her a quick glance, the smallest smile, as they approach the hill and the dry bed of the Salsipuedes River. She wants to believe him, but she’s still tense. “I promise. I can show you the literature, even, sometime, if you want.”

She doesn’t answer. They cross the bridge, and Santa Teresa proper is laid out before them, the crescent of the city lying like a wave on the riviera, basking in the late-afternoon sun.

* * *

Ren slips the catch, and lifts the casing. Mitaka’s bike, parked next to his, provides some cover. The paper packages he’s taped inside have made the trip mostly unscathed. He strips them quickly out, aware that the motor court is quiet but not deserted, and makes his way to his room with them under his arm, and his small traveling case in his hand. He unlocks the door, and thinks, _if Mitaka can have a steady girl, why shouldn’t I —_

He cuts himself off, but even as he shuts out the words of the thought, he’s imagining that the door is being opened by someone else, someone letting him in. Someone glad to see him. Someone who puts a bare arm around his neck, cool and soft.

_The desert ought to have a patron saint. Her attributes a white dress and a cold glass bottle, dripping moisture down her neck._

He can see the ocean from his window. He looks out at it, across the hot black asphalt of the parking lot and the freeway, across the train tracks, and lowers the blinds. He opens the paper packages and lays their contents neatly on the little desk. He puts his traveling case on the desk and takes out his brush and ink, and with a last glance at the cool blue sea, sits down to mark the bills.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Conk** — A hairstyle which was basically _de rigueur_ for black men for the first half of the 20th Century. Hair was straightened with a lye mixture — essentially burning it straight. Moisture can bring back the curl.  
>  **Webfoot** — A horse who runs well on mud or wet ground.  
>  **Boot a horse home** — Win a race.  
>  **Close fit** — Narrow victory.  
>  **Rincón** — The hollow bend of a geographic feature. In this case, the part of the California coast that curves sharply out to the west. Lit. _corner._  
>  **Purse race** — A race in which every entrant puts in money, which is carried away by the victor. The jockey usually gets a 10% cut.  
>  **Bangtail** — A mildly derogatory term for a racehorse.  
>  **Oat-guzzler** — A very derogatory term for a racehorse; an oat-guzzler isn't worth the feed.  
>  **Play against the iron men** — Place a bet on a horse through a [parimutuel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parimutuel_betting) machine.  
>  **Agua fresca** — Flavored non-alcoholic cold drinks. Lit. _fresh water._  
>  **Jamaica** — Hibiscus-flavored agua fresca.  
>  **Ride by hand** — To ride a horse using only the reins and bodyweight, without the spurs or whip.  
>  **Motor court** — Motel.
> 
>  
> 
> Geography: Californian pronunciation of Spanish place-names adheres roughly to the rules of Spanish pronunciation. The **Conejo Grade** is a truly enormous slope that divides the greater Los Angeles area, largely residential, from the more agricultural counties to the north. **The 101** , like most California freeways, takes a definite article. **Santa Rosa** and **Santa Monica** are other California cities; a quick consultation of a map will show you that Santa Teresa is a thinly veiled variation on Santa Barbara, but the Salsipuedes River is totally fictional. (SB does have a Salipuedes Street, though.) **Salsipuedes** means _get out if you can._
> 
> Jockeys have to weigh in so that gamblers can be informed how much weight a horse is carrying. In a handicap race, better horses are handicapped with extra weight in addition to the jockey's own.
> 
> In _The Last Jedi_ , Paige’s ship is called _Cobalt Hammer_ ; Ross Macdonald’s last novel about his hardboiled detective Lee Archer was called _The Blue Hammer. Sleeping Beauty_ is also a late Archer book.


	4. Santa Teresa County

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Camarillo Han goes abruptly silent. 
> 
> “Good to pick your own name,” he mutters, after a while. “Horses have both lines in their names. Sire and dam. Mexican names, too; they got the father and the mother’s names. Might make a whole different person of you. A whole different man. Benjamin Solo Orreaga. Maybe he’d have been better off than Ben Solo.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to [Bombastique](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bombastique/pseuds/Bombastique) for reading this chapter over and correcting my total ignorance of Japanese. Credit is hers, blame is mine.

Poe’s surprised to find that his mood gets lighter as he takes the exit for the ranch. Maybe he secretly expected to be struck down for coming here, and now that he’s made it unscathed, he can breathe a little easier. He even hums a little as he climbs out of the car to drag the gates open. _Hey there; you with the stars in your eyes…_ The bright wooden sign says _Rancho Esperanza_ but from the back you can still see the old wrought-iron letters in faux-Arabic script: _Al Daran._

“I hope you’re prepared to tactfully admire a whole stable of Falcon's temperamental offspring."

"Of course," Poe says. He hadn’t thought about the horses, and his heart lifts a little. Falcon was always crusty with him, but the memory of Arturo out in the field in his white straw hat with the blue ribbon, whistling as a gang of eager colts followed him in hopes of apples or carrots, falls over him like a sunbeam.

The house is what it always was, two stories of white-washed adobe and red tile, with single-story arms reaching out to make a little courtyard. The courtyard is dusty, with a little fountain they only turn on for special occasions, and the windows have decorative iron gratings that he used to climb on. As he pulls up close, though, the back garden looks bigger than he remembers. There's a little girl in it, carefully prying the roses open with her fingers, the mud drying grey on her sandals and her orange-and-white striped skirt.

"Is that Arturo's niece?" he asks Leila, shocked. "I thought she was a baby."

"Time still passes when you're not around, you know," she replies, and after her earlier delicacy, the affectionate acidity of her reply is bracing. He grins and climbs out of the car.

The little girl runs to Leila, but stops, frowning, when she sees him. He drops down to her level. "<Are you Tío Arturo's niece? He sent me a picture of you when you were just a baby.>"

"<I'm not a baby,>" she announces sullenly. "<I'm eight.>"

"<Eight is too many years for a baby,>" he agrees with her.

 _"Francisco!"_ cries a shocked voice, lisping on the sibilants. A thin, stooped man is standing in the front door, carefully settling an elaborate hat of golden velvet on his head. Santa Teresa has plenty of people who insist on turning _s_ to _th_. They reek of an ugly _criollo_ nostalgia; America’s a raw deal, but Poe knows who’s buried, nameless, behind the Mission; he doesn’t think colonial Spain was a better one. But Pío’s the only one Poe knows of who does it to make sure you don't forget he has a doctorate from the University of Barcelona. The fringed doctoral cap not being hint enough, evidently. "<I saw you from the window of the library; I scarcely had time to put my hat on as I came downstairs. Francisco! Do you even recognize me?>"

"<What a question, Tío Pío!>”

“<Now, Bibiana, say hello to Tío Francisco,>” Pío instructs the little girl. Her only response is to deepen her frown and back up a step.

“<I’m eight; I’m not a baby.>”

“<I remember. You can call me Tío Poe, if you want.>”

 _“ <Poe,>”_ she says, making a face, and then turns to Leila. “<There are bugs in the roses.>”

“<Thank you, mija. I’ll take care of it.>” She turns to Poe. “You’ll stay for dinner, won’t you?”

“<Tío Arturo!>” the little girl cries, running out of the garden and into a stand of young citrus trees. “<There’s a man here! He says his name is _Poe!_ >”

He straightens up, thinking. “I should go out. But probably not until it’s getting dark. If dinner’s early, I can probably make it.”

“Good,” she says. “Is seven all right? I’ll get it started now. Really we can eat any time; who knows when Han will be back.”

“Rey’ll find him,” he reassures her.

 _“Poe,”_ says a scornful voice. Poe turns and finds Arturo standing with his hands in his pockets. He seems barely taller than his niece, who stands happily in his shadow. He picks up his hat and resettles it on his head. “<Poe, you’re calling yourself? Huh!>”

“<Hello, Tío Arturo.>”

Arturo looks him over, head to toe, mouth flat. “<The horses missed you,>” he says, finally, and turns away. “<You should stay the night; you can take Blackbird an apple in the morning.>”

* * *

Rey dawdles a bit, insisting on retrieving her bag and driving gloves from her car, so that she can lead Finn to it, and then asking Mr. Solo questions about the engine in his '48 Cadillac (battered but still chrome-nosed) until she sees Finn idling in the distance. Paige looks so tired Rey can feel it in her own bones; she packs her gently into the backseat, with her suitcase beside her, and the jockey slumps over it into sleep almost before Rey closes her door. Han, too, leans slowly sideways with his white head against the window as she turns the car away from the San Gabriel Mountains, glancing back in the rear-view mirror to make sure Finn is still with them.

She’s trying to decide if he’s sleeping or looking at the mountains when he asks her, “Did your parents know you’d end up here?”

Her heart stalls out. She swallows hard and feeds the engine more gas, her fingers tight on the wheel. “What do you mean?”

“The city,” he says, and swings his arm out to the colossal expanse of Los Angeles beyond her window. “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles. Did your parents know you’d come here when they named you Reina?”

Rey swallows hard. “They didn’t name me Reina.”

“Yeah?” He looks interested. “You pick it out for yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Good for you.”

“My friend Poe helped.” _Major Uther-Platt calls me Queenie,_ she’d told him. He’d made a face. _I’m not calling you that. You don’t look like a Queenie._ “He told me it was a good name to have in Los Angeles.” _I know,_ she’d said, tracing her old name in the dust. _He says it to make fun of me._

"You know how we name racehorses?" Han asks. His voice is slow and quiet. He sounds sad. "Bit of the sire's name, bit of the dam's. Like Blue Hammer. We bred my girl Falcon with a stallion called Blue Moon; they had a filly and we named her Blue Bird. This breeder Leila's folks knew, he had a horse called John Henry, and he sired a colt on a Mexican mare who was called Joiner's Tools, so they called the colt Steel Hammer. People think Mexico's only good for quarter horses. People are stupid. Anyway. Blue Hammer's by Steel Hammer, out of Blue Bird. We bred them twice; the first one that came, we called Steel Blue. Steel Blue's a big fella; can't run for shit." He shifts awkwardly. "Pardon the language."

“Of course.”

“You gotta pardon it, I guess; my wife’s paying you.”

“I’ve heard worse.”

He gives her a long considering look. “Yeah,” he says gently. “I bet you have.”

He talks about horses for a long time; horses he’s bred, horses he’s trained, horses he’s ridden. Rey moves placidly in the end-of-the-day traffic, and when it clears, drives on at precisely 50, five short of the limit. She is careful not to wake Paige or lose Finn.

* * *

Mitaka knocks on his door. “Wait a damn minute!” Ren snaps. He knows he’s running late; he’s making Mitaka late. He’d had to fan the bills out to let the ink dry, and whoever packaged them originally knew how to pack them tighter than he does; they don’t quite fit in the original wrapping. “Get me a paper bag!”

“What?” Mitaka asks from the other side of the door.

 _“A paper bag, Donny,”_ he hollers. “A goddamn _bag_ made out of _paper!”_

“We’re late, Ren,” Mitaka says pleadingly. “He’s expecting us.”

“You want to show up with it stuffed in your pockets? Get me a paper bag!”

Ren hears his footsteps as he leaves and returns, and yanks open the door to snatch the bag out of his hands. He tears it flat and wraps the last unmanageable stragglers into a neat bundle. He forces it into his case and pushes past Mitaka in the doorway, and has his bike started and rolling before Mitaka has even got his key in.

Oka-san is waiting in an old Victorian house in the foothills. It seems under-furnished, and a bit dusty, but there’s a bay window with a view of the Mission and the sea beyond it. Ren smiles grimly to himself as he goes up the stairs. His heart is beating fast. The old man sits in what seems to be the only chair in the house, regarding them with something between disappointment and contempt.

Mitaka bows humbly, apologizing meekly for their lateness, and introduces Ren, who copies his bow. “<He speaks Japanese, oyabun,>” he adds.

“<Not well, sir,>” Ren says.

“<I can tell,>” Oka says. A deep scar divides his face; Ren wonders if the eye it crosses is glass. He returns his attention to Mitaka. “<I understand you were unable to exchange the money in the casinos.>”

“<Only a fraction, oyabun. We tried the new method, but the casino owners were suspicious.>”

“<So we fall back on the original plan. And your friend proposes to be useful to us.>”

“<I couldn’t have gotten the money over the border without him. And he’s marked the bills so we’ll know the exchange for clean money has been made.>”

Ren unfolds one of the packages and shows the fine lines that run down the corner of the bills when they’re stacked. The old man looks at them, pursing his lips, and then at him.

“<You understand that we are not in the habit of working with people like you.>”

“<I do.>”

“<But my kobun says you’ve helped him before.>”

Ren keeps his eyes lowered, and wonders what exactly Donny’s told him.

* * *

In Camarillo Han goes abruptly silent. 

“Good to pick your own name,” he mutters, after a while. “Horses have both lines in their names. Sire and dam. Mexican names, too; they got the father and the mother’s names. Might make a whole different person of you. A whole different man. Benjamin Solo Orreaga. Maybe he’d have been better off than Ben Solo.”

That poor thin boy. Rey wonders if Han suspects that his wife is making more inquiries. “Ben Solo?” she probes.

“My son.” His fist beats slowly against the window. “I had a boy.”

“What happened to him?”

“I did wrong by him.”

She drives in silence for a while, but he doesn’t say anything else, and she argues with herself about how far she can push client confidentiality. “I have a business partner,” she finally says. “I mentioned him before; I called him Poe. But I think you know him. Francisco de Marino.”

His fist hits the glass hard, and stays, bracing him. “So you know all about my family then, huh?”

“No. He never mentions you.”

“What? Not even Blackbird?” He sounds affronted. Another horse, Rey assumes.

“He never told us anything.”

Han’s fist resumes its slow rhythm. “He was a good kid,” he finally says, grudgingly, “Paco. Good on a horse.”

“Did he and your son get along?”

“Didn’t talk much. Paco had six years on him. He liked horses. Planes. You know, boy things. Ben liked… books. Cried a lot. Sensitive, I guess.”

Rey wonders if he knows about Poe, and if he’d revise his idea of what he was like as a child if he knew. If he’s revised his memory of his son in light of what Leila’d told him.

Maybe Han’s thought are running somewhere similar. “I suppose Ben was all right with the horses too. Helped me fix the car.” He sounds confused. “I did him wrong,” he says again, and then he’s quiet for a long time. 

When they come alongside the Pacific, the sun is halfway sunk under the waves. Rey longs to roll down the window and smell the ocean. But Paige is sleeping, so she leaves it up, and considers the case of a boy who cried too much, and beat a man unconscious in a left-handed bar. A boy who stole his father’s service pistol, and then drowned himself in the sea.

* * *

Mrs. Solo finds his old clothes for him. He’d been fully grown when he left home, so most of them are still his size. He pulls on an old pair of jeans and folds them into sharp cuffs. Then an undershirt, and his old leather jacket over it. He borrows some Tres Flores from Arturo and sharpens his curls into something you could cut your fingers on. The baby’s the only one who sees him off, her head tilted in curiosity as he gets in his car such a different man than he got out.

He parks on the edge of the Mesa. He waits, leaning over the low branch of a live oak, watching the last glow of the red sky stain the waves and the islands in the channel fall into shadow. When the sun’s gone and the street lights come on, he walks down the steep road, past the harbor, and towards the commercial docks. Nothing’s tied up there now — the fishing boats and the oil men put in at Astillero. But it’s not deserted yet — won’t be for hours. He knows, from the nights he spent before the war, sixteen and breathless, stock-still in a doorway across the street, watching what went on. Learning the rules of that kind of game. 

The spots under the yellow-green dock lights mostly belong to women, but there are two young men sitting together in the shadows on a fisherman’s bench, legs laid out just so. He approaches them with a pack of cigarettes outstretched, a peace offering. So they don’t think he’s muscling in on their turf.

They nod at him and accept cigarettes. They’re young; not chicken, but at 30, he must look like an elder to them. Just as well: Poe’s only ever fucked for money twice, and it was in Europe; there’s a distance between him and these boys, and he can let age excuse it. “How long you been working this town?”

“Couple of months,” one of them shrugs, his peroxided forelock falling into his eyes. _Hell. A local flit getting it in the teeth is ancient history to them._ Still, he has to try.

“Do you know where the chickenhawks hunt around here these days?” They both stare incredulously at him; he rolls his eyes. “I’m not delusional; I know my marks. When I _was_ a kid, I knew a guy. Generous. Thought I’d look him up for old time’s sake. Last I heard some punk beat him pretty bad in L.A., but I was on my way up north; I didn’t have time to look in on him.”

“Try the back of the Jalisco Market,” the other one says, dismissive. He has dark curls and a dancer’s outline, like Poe. His eyes tell Poe he wants him gone.

“Wait,” says the peroxided one. “Do you mean _Orson Krennick?”_

Poe stretches his neck like he didn’t catch that. “Sorry?”

“Orson Krennick. Tall guy, thin, grey hair? Some kind of low-level bigshot around here. I heard he was a chickenhawk, but he shops for trade down here sometimes; he’s always telling them how _generous_ he is, and he’s got an _atomic_ mark on his forehead, like somebody broke his face for him.”

Poe nods slowly. “Thanks,” he says, and backs away, to the evident relief of the dark-haired man. Orson Krennick. A bigshot. Sounds like the kind of man who’s in the phone book. Maybe even the kind of man Leila knows.

He’s almost out of hearing when the dark-haired one calls out. He gestures with his lit cigarette, and Poe returns to share their shadow.

“Listen, miss,” the kid says. “I know you said you knew him. But take care of yourself. The ones he picks out — they don’t come back.”

* * *

They cross the county line, and dip down into a little valley as the Santa Ynez mountains rear up in the distance. Rey turns on her lights. As they crest a hill, she reads the road signs. 

_U.S. 101_   
_Lorde Varder Memorial Highway_

_Astillero 5 mi_   
_Salsipuedes River 8mi_   
_Santa Teresa 20 mi_   
_Immaculada 70 mi_

“Oh, you have a river here?”

Han snorts. “If you can call it that. Damn thing’s been dry since ‘46.” He sits up a bit straighter in his seat and asks the question she’s been waiting for since she introduced herself. “How’d you find me, anyway? I told Leila I was going to Vegas.”

“Funny thing,” she says casually. “I was going to Vegas to look for you. But I stopped in Barstow for gas, and there was a man there who seemed to know you. He said you’d be at Santa Anita.”

“What man?”

“I think his name was Ren. That’s what his friend called him. But they were speaking Japanese, so I don’t know if it was his name or a title or what.”

His hands are gripping the dashboard. “A Japanese man told you I’d be at Santa Anita.”

“In the owners’ box. He said he owed you. Or your family, I guess.”

 _“What?”_ His knuckles are white. “What did he say?”

“He said, ‘I owe the Solos one.’”

“No,” he says. “No, you’re mistaken. Maybe he said, ‘Solo owes me one?’ Was that it?”

“No, he said he owed you. The Solos.”

“Rey,” Han says. His grip on the dash is deathly. “Not one of those _chivalrous gentlemen_ owes _me_ anything.”

Rey understands something of what he means. Those were expensive bikes. Any language you can name, there’s a gang that does business in it. “I’m not sure he was Japanese. Most of his head was covered; he had a big helmet and shades.” Han is shaking his head mechanically. “He had a Vincent motorcycle,” she adds. It doesn’t seem to mean anything to him.

“None of them owe me. And _none_ of them owe _Leila.”_

He keeps shaking his head. Rey checks her rearview. Paige is still sleeping. Finn’s still with them.

* * *

Poe finds a payphone with an intact phonebook. Krennick is listed — just his number, no address. He drops in his nickel, but no one answers. Since he gets his coin back, he calls the answering service they use. “Hello; this is Miss Connors answering for Resistencia Investigations.”

“Hey there, Katie, it’s Poe. Any messages?”

“Not a peep.”

“Fine, fine. Thanks, Katie.”

“No problem.”

Santa Teresa streets are dead at night; even the 101 seems empty. The only light on in the main house is in the library, where Leila must be waiting for him. He thinks of changing back into his suit, but in the end he just puts on a workshirt and combs his brilliantined hair back flat.

She’s sitting alone under a lamp looking through the manuscript of whatever Pío’s written this week for his eternal, unpublishable History of Santa Teresa, but she gets up when she sees him.

“I think the man Ben beat was a man called Orson Krennick. Do you know him?”

She sits down again. Her face is troubled. He’s sorry for being abrupt with her. He pulls up a stool and settles himself at her elbow.

“You think Ben attacked Orson Krennick,” she repeats slowly. 

“I don’t have any proof. All I heard was that he was the kind of man I was looking for, and that he had a scar on his face, like you might get from a fight. Do you know him? Do you know when he got his scar? If it’s from the war or something — ”

“No,” she interrupts. “He must have gotten it — yes, either ‘50 or ‘51. So. It might have been him in the bar.”

“I found him in the phonebook; I called him, but he didn’t pick up.”

“No,” she says, and the reflected light of approaching headlights glows on the wall behind her. “He wouldn’t. He died two weeks ago. That must be Han coming home. Miss Jaffa is very efficient.”

They go downstairs to welcome Han, and Poe is surprised to see Rey getting out of the driver’s side, and a third person getting out of the back. Leila is clearly surprised, too; she stops very abruptly, peering through the dark. “Paige? Is that you?”

“Yes, Mrs. Solo,” says a woman’s voice with an accent he doesn’t recognize.

“I’m so sorry — Han didn’t call; I had no idea you were coming — Han, we already ate dinner and the guest room’s not ready — I can get you something from the pantry — _Han — ”_

“Sorry, Leila,” he says roughly. He runs his hands through his white hair and his mouth makes the empty frame of a smile.

There’s a strange tension in the air; Poe expected resentment and shame between husband and wife, and he can see how the unexpected visitor adds awkwardness, but Rey seems involved somehow — Han keeps looking at her like he’s afraid of her.

“I’ll get the room ready for Paige. You can show Rey here where the telephone is; she needs to call her friend.”

“I left my car down south at Santa Anita Park. I need to call Finn to pick it up and come get me.” She winks at him. Poe has no idea what that’s meant to mean.

“Don’t bother Finn,” he says. “My car’s here; I’ll drive you back myself and come back in the morning.”

“You can’t do that,” Leila protests. “You should both stay the night. Only — oh, we only have two guest rooms.”

“I can sleep in the barn,” Paige volunteers.

“What, on the hay? Don’t be ridiculous, Paige. Bibiana’s just gone to bed, but we could wake her up and move her to Arturo’s room — ”

“Oh, no,” Rey says. “Really; don’t do that. If there’s just a diner or a bar where I could go wait for my friend… ”

“But we can’t let you — ”

“Tell you what,” Han interposes. “How ‘bout we put her up at the Tecumdana for the night? She won’t have to put up with us, and her friend won’t have to drive all over creation and up the rincón in the dark.”

“But she’s alone, Han.”

“I’ll be fine, Mrs. Solo,” Rey assures her. “I’m a private detective; I’ve worked plenty of overnight cases alone. Finn can get me tomorrow, and if it’s close, Poe can drive me and be _right back.”_ She’s looking at him intently and he still has no idea what she’s trying to tell him, but he hurries to agree.

“Sure, Mrs. Solo. I’ll drive her over right now.”

“Put it on her bill,” Han says, and disappears into the house.

 _“Poe,”_ Rey hisses at him as soon as he turns on his car. “I didn’t leave it my car at Santa Anita. I left it for Finn. He’s following that girl; I think he thinks she has the blueprints his client wants in her case.”

“I was supposed to get that from a wink?” he protests.

“Look, there he is.” The Chevy is parked under the concealing canopy of an oak; Finn’s arm is draped out the driver’s side, a cigarette glowing between his fingers. Poe rolls down his window and leans out.

“Hey, Askari. Look sharp.”

Finn sighs. “A fellow can’t have a smoke around here without some wiseass flyboy getting on him. What are you doing here?”

“I drove Mrs. Solo home. She asked me to stay. What’s the plan here, Finn? If you were scheming a little light burglary, I don’t recommend it.”

Finn rolls his eyes. “That jockey Mr. Solo has with him? She’s the maid’s sister.”

“She’s a jockey?”

“She rides for Solo a lot,” Rey puts in.

“That case she’s carrying is awfully big for a casual trip up the coast. I think the maid handed off the blueprints to her sister. Whatever they are, I don’t think they’re useful to a _jockey._ She’s either going to try to hand them off again or sell them.”

“Fair enough. But I’d get closer to the house if you want to do good surveillance. There’re a lot of out-buildings and most of the fences are pretty climbable; if she’s going to sneak out, there’s no shortage of cover. If you get caught, you were looking for Rey; you misunderstood her on the phone.”

“Got it. Thanks. Where’re you off to?”

“I’m taking Rey to a motel. I’m staying the night here, but there aren’t enough guest rooms.”

“Sure. Convenient you’re an inside source on this. Don’t suppose you’d search her case for me?”

“I’ll look into it. Don’t count on me, though.”

Finn looks to the heavens. “When should I ever?”

Poe makes a face at him. Finn smiles. _I miss you,_ Poe thinks, and then, _at least I can admit he’s gone. That’s progress._

* * *

Rey gets out of Poe’s car in front of a neat motel, and he gives her the number for the Solos’ house. “Try Maisie’s next door if you want a drink,” he recommends. “Pours most everything, and the juke is fresh.”

She puts her bag down on the bed, and puts on a sweater. She could turn in; she’s been driving all day. But she’s not tired. 

She walks across the parking lot under the green glow of the motel’s neon sign. Maisie’s is dark and small and quiet; the booths are upholstered in dark red and the lights are shaded. The woman behind the bar smiles as she pours for Rey and calls her order back to the kitchen. The jukebox is playing:

_Hey there; you with the stars in your eyes_   
_Love never made a fool out of you_   
_You used to be so wise._

Rey picks a booth near the door. She likes to be able to see the door. And this way she can get a glimpse of the rising moon. She eats her French fries slowly, savoring the salt, and squeezes every drop of juice from the lime in her gin and tonic.

Her case is closed, her game is over. But Finn and Poe are still playing — on the same board, it seems. If the Huxleys have been living here for a while, it makes sense that their maid’s sister might have met Mr. Solo at some point; it’s not that big a town, and his horses seem notable. And Mr. Solo, for better or worse, is clearly a man with a lot of connections.

And secrets, perhaps. _I did wrong by him._

A bottle of saké she didn’t order hits the table. “Hey,” says a dark voice. “It is you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Tío** — Lit. _uncle,_ but a general title of respect children use for adult men close to the family.  
>  **Criollo** — Criollos are people born in Spanish colonial territory of exclusively Spanish descent. The Spanish racial caste system is complicated; you can read more about it [here.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta) It never really died in the U.S. and it doesn't fit perfectly with Anglo-American notions of race. There are not just social but legal complications of this into the present day.  
>  **Mija** — Contraction of _mi hija, my daughter._ An affectionate address for a girl.  
>  **El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles** — The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angeles. Legally Los Angeles is now _The City of Los Angeles,_ but it was founded by the Spanish under this name. Well, [no one can really agree about that](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-mar-26-me-name26-story.html), but it was something like this, and people often poetically call the city the Queen of Angels.  
>  **Oyabun** — Like _san,_ a Japanese term of respect. It means something like _father figure_ but in this case a good cross-cultural translation might be _godfather._  
>  **Kobun** — The inverse of oyabun; the child-figure.  
>  **Trade** — Male prostitute.  
>  **Saké** — Sweet Japanese rice wine. Sometimes used for ceremonial purposes in Japanese society, including among the Yakuza.
> 
>  
> 
> Behold the [doctoral regalia](https://www.cancilleria.gob.ec/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Doctorado-honoris.jpg) of the University of Barcelona, founded in 1450.
> 
> The Yakuza self-identify as "ninkyō dantai,” or _chivalrous organizations_. They tend to be associated with right-wing Japanese political views, including Japanese ethnic supremacy.
> 
> [A California coastal live oak](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Te4ToeeFHfU/T_jOQZxukRI/AAAAAAAACQM/U_FgQ7JHeUQ/s1600/GiovanniLoCascio.jpg) with the characteristic silhouette. Coastal live oaks are tolerant of saline and can grow much closer to the shore than other oak trees; they have small, sharp leaves.
> 
> In 1954, The Pajama Game was a big hit on Broadway and the radio and the jukeboxes were blowing up with ["Hey There."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxS95iRcc7A) In 1954, [the Castle Bravo tests at Bikini Atoll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo) rapidly became public, and _atomic_ was youth slang for _awesome._
> 
> Oh, right, [Twitter](https://twitter.com/LinearAO3), [Tumblr](https://linearla.tumblr.com/), come yell at me or whathaveyou.


	5. The Lone Woman of the Island

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At first she slows for the curves, but the machine responds so precisely to her hands that she starts to keep speed around them. The motor purrs, a steady hum of encouragement, and when the road straightens, she lets it build to a velvety roar. The speedometer ticks upwards like a clock. 65, then 70. Ren's knees are warm and closed solidly against her. The wind bites at her hands as she tears along a wide curve and accelerates again, and then again, slashing through the landscape. 80, 85, 90. She’s the fastest thing in the world. She laughs and throws her head up above the windscreen; her speed rips her hair loose, and Ren's knees tighten just a little.

“What’s your name?” he asks, blunt as the back of a knife. Like he’s come to collect on a debt. 

Rey stares at him. His helmet is unbuckled under his chin, and it seems to take several seconds for him to realize he looks unusual, standing in a shadowy dive with sunglasses and a motorcycle helmet. He lifts the helmet off; the dark hair underneath it is long enough to fall across his forehead, sweaty and rumpled from confinement. 

He strips off the mirrored aviators, too. “You’re not Japanese,” she blurts. _Oh, hell. Maybe I drank that gin and tonic too fast._

He doesn’t ask her if he can join her; he just slides in across from her in the booth. “No. I’m not. What’s your name?” That voice. Rey’s not going to let him see her shiver.

“Reina. Reina Jaffa.”

“La Reina de los Angeles.”

“You’re the second person to make that joke in one day.”

“It’s not a joke. I was just noticing. Who was the other?”

“Mr. Solo. I found him. Thanks for the tip, by the way. Do I owe you a — ”

“No.” He opens the bottle of saké and clinks its lip heavily down on the rim of the empty glass where her gin was, looking at her from under his brows. Rey shakes her head.

“You said you owed him. His family.” He doesn’t reply to that; he pours her glass full of rice wine. “I don’t want — ” 

His gloved hand closes around the glass and raises it to his own mouth. It seems so queerly presumptuous, and so queerly intimate.

“What are you drinking, Reina?”

“If I wanted more to drink, I’d have taken you up when you offered to pour.”

“Yeah?” He sounds skeptical. “Not afraid of Japanese liquor?”

“It’s more like wine, isn’t it?”

“Mmm.” He empties the glass. “How’d you know that?”

“I know a lot of little scraps of things. I’m an investigator.”

He knits his brows, pouring himself more. His dark eyes seem familiar; she wonders if she’d caught some trace of them before, behind the mirrored lenses. Or maybe she’s thinking of the woodcut of a wolf in a book of fairytales.

“An investigator? Insurance?”

“Private. I have two partners; we’re an agency.”

“Are they girls too?” He’s taking more time with his second glass, looking at her over the rim.

“No. I’m the woman of the place. I mostly take women’s cases.”

“What does that mean? Two-timing husbands?”

“Sometimes. Last time my clients were two girls who had their pimp skip town with their share of a week’s work in his pocket.”

His eyes go a bit wide. She holds them. Lets him understand. _I’m not the law; the law’s not my concern._

His lids lower, but he doesn’t break her gaze as he sips again. “Did you get their money back?”

She lets her eyes slide away from his. “I don’t make deals like that. I can’t promise results. I found him. I left the rest to them.” That’s not entirely true. He’d had a switchblade. Rey has it now. “I’m good at finding people.”

“How’d you get into the business?”

 _The major told me I could have rations in exchange for information. I didn’t know what the information was for. And once I’d taken his food, no one else would feed me._ “I have a long-standing interest in not starving.”

“Why do you stay in it, then?”

“The thrill of the chase,” she says glibly, wondering if she doesn’t want another drink after all. But he looks at her seriously. She swallows. “My partners are my friends. And — and sometimes I can do things, help people. I don’t like seeing cheats and bastards get away with everything.”

He’s so still it’s unnerving. She wonders if he’s offended; she doesn’t know what he does for a living, but it’s probably not above-board. There’s a difference between a criminal and a brute, though, and for some reason she desperately wants to believe that this man, with his stormy voice and his hungry look, isn’t the sort who’d turn a girl out and steal her pay.

His voice is hoarse as he lifts his glass. “I’ll drink to that. I hope you crush them all.”

She watches him drain his second cup. Somewhere behind her, a coin clinks into the juke; the box whirs, the music starts, and Eddie Fisher starts to sing:

_Oh! My pa-pa, to me he was so wonderful_  
_Oh! My pa-pa, to me he was so good_

The man across the table slams the saké bottle down violently. “Screw this. Screw this song. Whose idea was this?”

_No one could be so gentle and so loveable_  
_Oh! My pa-pa, he always understood._

He half-rises from his seat, shouting, “Who put this fucking song on?”

Rey does _not_ want to see what happens when this man gets into a bar fight. He has the panicking, outraged look of a leopard in a trap, clawing at nothing. Just over a schmaltzy song. “What’s your name?” she asks him loudly. “It sounded like your friend called you Ren.”

He slams the bottle against the table again, shaking all over, and for a moment she thinks he’s going to ignore her. But he slides back down in his seat. “Yeah. That’s me. This place has gone to hell since Maisie started putting white records in the juke.” 

Rey is determined to change the subject. “Where’d you learn Japanese?”

“Around. Books and crap. Mostly around.” He pours another glass. His hand steadies, doing it, but Rey isn’t sure a third round is such a hot idea.

“Aren’t you supposed to drink that in spoonfuls?”

He snorts. “You said yourself, it’s just wine. Think I can’t handle it?”

“It’d be a shame if you crashed that Vincent.”

“Right. Right. I forgot you liked my bike so much.” His face tells her he forgot no such thing.

“I’ve read about it. The Black Knights and the Black Princes, they’re Series D, right? They say the engine’s an improvement on the Series C, and the enclosure helps stabilize it. Directs airflow.”

“I suppose. I never tried a Series C.”

“Is it true it can break the ton? 100 miles per hour? You hear so much about how fast Vincents are; the ads and all — ”

Ren’s eyes are fixed on the tabletop, following the one fingertip of hers which Rey realizes she has been using to trace around and around the ring of condensation her drink left. Slowly, he moves to look at her face. “You like to go fast?”

The moon is a waxing crescent over his shoulder. She watches his eyes, in shadow under the shaded light. She watches his mouth. “If I’m the one driving.”

He tilts his head, and lets his hair fall back over his brows again. “Why do you think I should let you ride off with my bike?”

“I’d bring it back!” she laughs. He doesn’t even smile. Just searches her face. 

“Would you?”

“Of course!” He looks away, at that, and takes another drink. “Look. If you don’t think I can drive your bike, say so. But you’re genuinely afraid I’m going to steal it? You genuinely don’t trust me?”

“Some people can just go around trusting people. We don’t all have that luxury.”

Rey sits back. Because that’s true. She understands that very well. But she _wants to ride that Vincent._

“Look,” she says finally. “If you sit on the back, you can grab it from me any time you like. Like ‘Roman Holiday.’”

“You think I should sit on the back of my own bike.”

“It’s after 9pm in Santa Teresa. Who’s going to see you?” He hesitates. “I’ll pick up your bar tab for your big bottle of rice wine.”

“Listen, Reina — ”

“My friends call me Rey.”

Those red lips stay open, but he doesn’t say anything else. After a long moment, he pushes his helmet across the table to her.

“I can’t wear this; it’s much too big.”

“I can’t wear it when you don’t have anything.”

“This is just wrong-headed chivalry; it’s very silly.” She pushes the helmet back across the table at him. “Put on your damn shell; I’ll pay for your drink.” She hurries to the bar, but she can hear him right behind her.

“Maisie,” he calls, and the woman behind the bar turns. “I’d like to settle my tab.” He puts a five on the counter. “And can you keep this for me? I’ll be back for it soon, if I don’t die.” He lays the helmet beside the five.

“Sure thing,” Maisie says. “Don’t die; it’s no way to spend a clear night.”

“I _said_ I’d pay.”

“Now you’re the one being ridiculous,” he says, and walks out without looking back.

* * *

Poe steps out of his room barefoot. Just on the off-chance that Miss Tico has left her suitcase somewhere convenient. The big red clay tiles are cool as he walks down the dark hall. Her door is firmly shut, no light shining underneath it. He tries the handle, very gently, preparing an excuse in case he wakes her, but it’s futile; the door is locked. He’s ready to creep back to his room when he hears the raised voices in the kitchen.

It’s not his business. But then, he has a case, and there might be a clue. He puts his feet down gently as he walks.

“ — so you can lie to me again?” Leila is asking. “Lie to me and run away?”

“I needed some time! I needed to think!”

“No. No. If you’d needed to think, you’d have gone for a walk, gone for a ride. You went to the track because you _don’t_ have to think there. Nobody at the track is going to remind you that you’re not 26. At the track they don’t care if you drink until you forget you have a son.”

“Is that what you think of me, Leila? That I have a couple beers and I forget Ben? I don’t forget.”

“You let it rest; you let the police tell you he was damaged goods and there was no point — ”

“He was gone, Leila; he was gone, and I couldn’t stand to see Tarquin and his boys at the sheriff dig up more mud on him. You wanted them to write _homosexual_ in their reports along with everything else? Let him have some peace.”

“My son didn’t kill himself because he was _ashamed;_ Ben would never — ”

 _“Your_ son, sure but he was _my_ son too and that’s what he couldn’t stand; if he could have killed me he — ”

The sound of a slap breaks his words, so loud Poe winces and takes a step backwards. 

_“Don’t say that, don’t say that, he loved you, it was me, it was my, my father,”_ Mrs. Solo sobs in the kitchen, but there’s another sound, behind him, and Poe turns, afraid he’ll see Bibiana’s round little face, as he had once stood here, listening to Mr. and Mrs. Solo argue and turned to see Ben, pale in the darkness. Instead he glimpses a flash of a woman’s hair and the door to the jockey’s room closing.

“Shhh, shhh,” Mr. Solo is saying, “Leila, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Poe walks back to his room, and lets his feet strike just a little harder on the tiles in front of Miss Tico’s door. There is a light under her door. He waits frozen, barely breathing, on the threshold of his own room. He hears the Solos’ voices go silent and sees all the other lights in the house flick off. He waits and waits. Nothing moves. At last the little strip of light under the guest room door goes out. He enters his room and undresses in perfect silence and perfect darkness. When he sleeps, he dreams that Ben Solo, ten years old, is sitting in his room, and writing the same word over and over on a paper he won’t let Poe see.

* * *

Rey watches as Ren turns the key, then straddles the back of the bike and looks at her challengingly, leaning on the rear fender. She takes a deep breath and kicks her leg up and over the engine, tucking the skirt of her dress up and under her. It pulls her hem up above her knee, almost to her stocking-tops, and she feels his weight shift on the motorcycle as he leans to look. "Tuck your legs up," she snaps, and kicks the starter. “And don’t get fresh; I’ve got a knife.”

The starter doesn't engage, but his knees come obediently up and bracket her hips around the engine. She tries kicking it started again, without luck. "Do it slower," he says, and she considers elbowing him backwards off his own bike, but instead she gives a slow, hard push and feels a flywheel kick-back follow. The Black Knight’s engine wakes up.

She pushes off and into first gear. His knees close further, near enough that she can feel the seams of his jeans brush her legs, but he keeps his hands to himself. "If you really want to see how it handles," Ren says, "turn left. Go up the hill, past the Mission, and turn right onto Calle Padre Serra."

Rey does. The engine is so quiet, if she couldn't feel it turning over she'd fear she'd stalled. It's late, and the streets are deserted; she flips on the headlamp to see her through the shadows between streetlights. When she sees the Mission, she squeezes the gas, ready to charge the hill. But the bike speeds up smoothly and then doesn't stop accelerating as she hits the hill. She sees the famous church as a blur of bells and roses, making the turn onto the road he named. She sees immediately why he suggested it; it winds around the foothills in a series of blind curves and hairpin turns. 

At first she slows for the curves, but the machine responds so precisely to her hands that she starts to keep speed around them. The motor purrs, a steady hum of encouragement, and when the road straightens, she lets it build to a velvety roar. The speedometer ticks upwards like a clock. 65, then 70. Ren's knees are warm and closed solidly against her. The wind bites at her hands as she tears along a wide curve and accelerates again, and then again, slashing through the landscape. 80, 85, 90. She’s the fastest thing in the world. She laughs and throws her head up above the windscreen; her speed rips her hair loose, and Ren's knees tighten just a little. 

The engine races underneath her like a heart, but she could make it go faster. The speedometer is marked all the way up to 115. They're coming to the river; for a moment, at the top of the bridge's curve, gravity loses hold of them, and she smiles with ferocious delight, baring her teeth at the night and everything in it that can never hurt her. 95, the speedometer says, and she banks hard into the curve that takes the road around the hill; her fingers move on the throttle and she accelerates out of the curve. 100. The dark groves of avocado trees loom in close and block out the moon; there are no streetlights; she is flying in the dark.

His hand brushes her elbow. She shakes him off. She’s broken 100; she’s immortal and untouchable; she can’t be caught and she can’t be stopped. But his hand settles again, more firmly, tugging, and she sees the intersection ahead. It costs her to loosen her right-hand grip and ease on the breaks, but she does it, turning right at the mute suggestion of the glove on her elbow.

The little road takes them between orchards and greenhouses and across the freeway; it narrows and roughens, and she can smell the ocean. There are no more farms or trees, only the dense, impassible thickets of chaparral. The road gives way to sandy ground and she lets go of the throttle entirely, letting the Black Knight roll to a stop at a dead end made of interwoven manzanita, scrub oak and lemonadeberry. Beyond the plants she can see the edge of the bluff, and the black and shining surface of the sea. The lights of the oil platforms shine on the middle distance like jewels, and the soft dark shapes of the islands sit at the horizon.

Rey hasn’t been aware of any sound for the last twenty-five minutes but the motor and the wind in her ears. Without them, she feels almost deaf; the sound of the waves crashing hundreds of feet below seems like an echo of the engine’s roar. Then she hears his voice. “Your hair’s all down.”

Her hands fly to it. “Oh — sorry — ”

“I wasn’t complaining.” His feet are planted on the ground, keeping the bike upright and stable. “You really do like to drive fast, don’t you?”

“Yes. I do. It feels like — like — ”

“Power.”

“I was going to say freedom.”

“But power is what you meant.”

“What I mean is, when you’re fast you can get away; no one can make you do anything; you’re — ”

“Safe.” There’s a note of wistful longing in his voice. Like it’s been a long time since he felt safe. He sighs, and shifts, and the bike shifts with him. “You probably live in LA or something, huh.”

She draws out her hairpins and tries to smooth the tangle at the back of her head. “Yeah. My agency’s in Echo Park.”

“Right.” Fog is gathering low on the water. “It’s nice here though, isn’t it?”

He sounds almost like he’s pleading, fishing for a compliment for the place he’s brought her. She looks out at the black sea with its glowing whitecaps, at the white California lilacs that dot the growth around her, and down the coast to the glittering sweep of Santa Teresa. “More than nice. It’s gorgeous.”

The breeze stirs the chaparral around them. It whispers, and the dry green smells of anise and sage rise. The leather of his jacket creaks faintly as he raises his arm to point. "See the island? That one?"

"I see it." His outstretched arm is close along her shoulder. She doesn't move away from it. He's warm, at her back and at her side as she leans just a little into his arm.

"That's Santa Rita. There used to be a tribe that lived there. When the Spanish built the Mission, they sent boats to the island and brought them all to the mainland. But they left one girl. Some people say she ran from the Spanish, that there were rumors that they killed Indians, made them slaves. Some people say they just forgot her, and she ran down the beach crying for them to come back." She inhales the salt air, slowly. His voice is soft as smoke. "The boats left without her, and she lived there alone, for years and years. Traders thought they saw her campfires. They told stories about her. Said she lived in a house she built of whale bones. Hunted with a spear made from a shark's tooth. Wore a cape made of feathers. Finally the mainland sent another boat to the island, and she came away with them. But when she got to Santa Teresa, all her people had died, and there was no one left in the world who spoke her language."

The wind comes off the sea, cold and alive. Rey shivers. His arm presses closer, and more of her weight rests against his chest. "How did they die?"

"Hmm?"

"Her people. How did they die?"

"I don't know." He shifts behind her, twisting his body and bending his head to try to see her. "Are you crying?"

Her face is wet. "No."

"Don't cry." He puts gentle hands on her shoulders and turns her to face him. One of her feet comes to rest on the ground beside his; the sandy turf gives under her shoe. "Doll," he says, tender, almost crooning, "you've got a soft heart, don't you?" 

"No; no, I just — " _I just —_

“Crying for a woman who’s been dead a hundred years.” The leather of his gloves smears tenderly at the saltwater on her cheeks. “Tracking down crooked pimps for working girls. Out to stop the cheats and the bastards. Bet you cry for the birds that hit the windows, don’t you, doll?”

“No, I — I’m not _soft,_ I’m just — just — " _Just so alone. Here in California, the Pacific, the San Andreas Fault; I’m so far —_

“Just what? You can tell me. Rey. If you’re not soft, what are you?” She takes a breath of the sweet sharp air. His eyes are searching hers, wide and close. She can feel him tremble. “Tell me what you are.”

She kisses him. His mouth is right there, soft and dark in the moonlight. It's a simple kiss, just the pressure of her lips against his. Then his arm wraps around her waist and her arms go around his neck, and both their mouths yield to one another, wet and hot; she breathes in his sweet saké, his feral terror, and kisses all her grief into his mouth.

He presses her back against the motorcycle's bars, holding the edge of the windscreen so that her head hits his arm instead. She slips her fingers through his hair and kisses his sweet lips again. He kisses her wet cheek, her neck, the hollow place behind her ear where she dabs perfume. 

"Let me take you home," he says into her ear. "Your place. I'll leave whenever you tell me." He rubs his soft lips against her jaw, gasping, "I swear, Rey. Let me. Please let me."

When she nods, he swallows and pulls her close, pressing himself against her leg so she can feel how he is, heavy and hard. She rubs against him and he shudders and hisses. He puts a hand under her knee, and she thinks he's going to reach under her skirt, but his other hand is still around her waist, and he lifts her up and pivots, setting her down behind him on the back of the bike.

"Hold on tight, doll," he says, and his foot strokes the motor back to life.

He takes them straight to the 101. On the back of the bike, she’s further from the engine, but she still hears it as he coaxes it from a purr to a growl to an open-throated snarl, and she pulls herself close against him so she can feel it fire underneath them. She looks at his hands on the bars. The freeway is empty and straight and pale under the moon. She leans around his arm to look at the speedometer, and he pushes it higher. 100. 105. Her hands are on his chest; she can feel him breathing. _He’s still trembling._ 110\. Double the federal limit. He pitches himself a little forward and she comes with him. The speedometer clicks past its last mark. No one can say what their speed is now. The only thing that’s true is that they’re fast. She buries her face against his collar.

It almost hurts to slow, and then stop in the motor court’s little parking lot. She hurries to unlock the door as he crowds her close from behind; the zipper of his jacket scrapes at her back and his mouth scrapes at her neck, and they tumble into the dark room, the stale-smoke smell of it overwhelmed by the smell of his body, like iron, cumin, saffron. Rey slides her hands underneath his leather and pulls him down to kiss her again. He grabs for her legs, thumbing at the nubs of her garters, and sighs against her throat as his hands half-circle her thighs and slide up to knead her ass. She fists her hands in his shirt as he hoists her to the height of his waist; she locks her ankles behind his back and feels him struggling with his gloves behind her back. It’s like they still have the pulse of the engine with them, driving them on; he's not fast enough; she wants him to have his gloves off _now,_ his jacket off _now;_ she rolls her hips against him and pulls at his shirt again.

He falls on the bed with her underneath him. They strike each other glancing blows as he fights his jacket off over his head and she struggles out of her sweater. He rips at the little bow at the neck of her sun-dress, and presses his nose to the hollow of her throat when it comes undone. The streetlight filters in through blinds and shines in his waving hair. “Wish I’d taken that saké with me.” His words are hot and damp against her breastbone. “Pour it on your skin and lick it off you. Make you drink it from my hands. Make you suck it from my fingers.”

She tightens her legs around him and his bare hot hands run greedily up and down her arms. “Soft little doll.” _Doll_ is round and velvet in his mouth. “Pretty little doll.”

Rey’s fingers scrape over the muscles of his back as she yanks his shirt up; he barely moves to get free of it before he’s pinning her arms to the bed and kissing her again. Between kisses he mumbles nonsense into her open mouth, a jumble of _c'mon, I swear, will you, please, Rey, Rey, Rey._ His hands leave her arms to pluck at the hem of her skirt; he tries to pull it up at the same time he slides down her body and it tangles, but as his knees hit the floor he gets it up around her hips.

He startles when he sees the switchblade clipped to the ribbon of her garter belt. “Told you I had a knife.”

“If I’d tried anything while you were riding you’d have put it through my hand, wouldn’t you?” He leans up and kisses her again. “Clean through without a blink. And cried for my poor hand later.”

She feels him unclip the knife. He lifts one of her knees over his shoulder; the rough stubble at his jaw pricks her through her stocking, and then his mouth is on her bare thigh. His fingers move her panties to the side and he breathes out, hard and deliberate. She twitches and tries not to whimper; she can feel how soaked she is. _That mouth, that mouth; I knew it was trouble when I saw it._

"Doll," he says softly, and his voice hums against her skin. "I wanna commit a little crime, doll."

He breathes on her again, just in case she couldn't guess which obscenity code he means to violate. "Well," she says, swallowing, "we already broke the speed limit."

Then she hears the quiet snick of the switchblade, and cool metal lies flat along her thigh. She feels every detail of it, handle and crossguard and stiletto blade, and shivers trace her body. Then the cutting edge tugs up and through the fabric between her legs and he lays one warm hand where the knife was. "There," he murmurs. "That's better." The switchblade makes a soft little thump on the carpet, and he fumbles for her hand, pressing it into his hair. "Hold on tight. You drive." She sinks her fingers in, rubbing the soft silk. "Hold on real tight."

* * *

She’s a mess, and it makes him feel dizzy. _I kissed her and she let me take her home; she opened her legs and she’s wet._ She splits under his fingers like a fallen orange, juice everywhere, glistening in the dark, and he sucks at her ravenously. He’d forgotten how women taste and she tastes so good; the tang of her makes him twitch. The mattress is waist-high as he kneels, and he pushes his cock against the soft edge of it. He wants to push it into her, fuck her dripping little cunt; he slides his tongue into her in a rhythm he matches with his hips and lets himself confuse the feelings.

He’s doped up on her warmth and high on her fingers in his hair. She’s so tight and so wet he wants to lift his mouth and beg her, _let me feel this on my cock, Rey; be a sweet little doll and let me fuck you into the fucking mattress._ But nothing could make him stop when she’s holding his head like this, like she wants him where he is. She tugs at his hair, dragging him up a little, and he chokes and goes where she wants him, licking over the shiny little pip of her. She moans, her fingers tightening in his hair, and his head floods white with bliss. _She likes that._ He fumbles his right hand to his zipper; she won’t notice and he has to, he has to.

Her thighs tighten around his head and he tightens his grip on his cock. Pretty Rey, his soft desert saint in her white dress. She likes it when he does bad things with her. Likes it, loves it, moans for it. He keeps licking, pumping himself with a hand wet with sweat and pre-come; her stockinged leg rubs urgently at his back and he feels like a diver, deaf to everything but the current that pulls him.

He gets lost in it, and loses his rhythm, but she holds his hair and drags herself against his tongue until he finds it again. _That’s right. You like it. Show me how much._ She does. Her body twists and arches on the bed, and she twitches and sobs and pulls him so close he could drown. He drinks it all down, gathers it all up, his hand moving jerkily over his cock. Every sound, every taste, every moment of her is a candle that will see him through some dark night in the future when he will not have anything.

He’d keep at it for as long as she’d let him, but she pushes him off and he sits back on his heels. He’s close, he’s so close; he kneels there in front of her with his jeans open and he should be ashamed but he can’t help it; his face is wet from nose to chin and she’s panting, lying with her legs spread so he can see everything he’s done.

“Are you — "

“Yeah. Yeah. Just — " He’ll stop, if she doesn’t like it. But she doesn’t look like she doesn’t like it. She looks sex-drunk and seduced, up on her elbows with her dress at her waist and her sliced-up panties peeled back. She looks like she wants to watch.

He leans back, arches his spine a little. It makes it feel better, and he feels her eyes trace across his chest, follow the length of his arm to where his hand is working himself.

“Do you want me to — "

“Just stay there. Stay like that. Keep your legs open for me.” She spreads them a little wider. _“Fuck._ Such a pretty dirty picture. You liked it, didn’t you?” She makes a little sound in her throat; it could mean anything. “Fuck. _Fuck.”_ She’s looking at him and it’s enough. He comes all over his chest, groaning, his eyes squeezed shut. She makes the sound again. _Put your knife through me, Rey,_ he thinks blindly. _Have mercy. Be the end of me._ He topples forward against the bed, his head against her knee.

* * *

Finn leans against the car, burning through an irresponsible fourth cigarette, trusting to the night air to keep him awake. He looks up at the road to the ranch; the house is dark and quiet, sleeping on its little hill. No footsteps coming down the drive, no doors opening or closing. No candles lit in windows or lamps flashing semaphore. If she’s just going to peacefully sleep the night away and waste Finn’s surveillance, he’s going to — 

A light goes on. Something small and dim. Not in the house, beyond it.

Finn ducks down behind the car and stubs out his cigarette, listening. If she’s turning on a light, she’s expecting her contact to come to her. He can’t hear a car yet, though someone could be coming by foot. But if Finn can beat them there — it’s risky, because he doesn’t know the property, but if he can get in place before the contact arrives, he can get a bead on the situation. See the contact’s face in the light. 

The main gate is a risk he’s not sure he wants to take; he’d heard the hinges moan when Poe opened and shut it. The fence down here is barbed wire, which of course he’s not crazy about. But it’s not trench barbed wire, POW-camp barbed wire; just horse-and-cattle barbed wire. With a sigh, he steps to the fence, places his hands carefully, puts his foot high, and leaps.

* * *

Rey looks down at the head against her leg, trying for a moment to understand what happened here. But what’s to understand? A small-change tough boy with a fast motorcycle and a pretty mouth. (More than pretty. Never mind that.) Rey’s not dumb. She’s not a child. This is the part where he tells her a lie and — 

“I know I said I’d leave,” he mumbles into her thigh. “I will. I swear. But.” She hears him swallow, and he can’t seem to go on. He’s rubbing at his chest with fierce, ineffective swipes. She shifts her leg a little and he only burrows his face deeper into it.

“Do you want to stay?” He nods, his sweat-damp hair a gentle rasp against her skin. “Okay. I have an early wake-up call, but if you don’t mind — ” 

He’s already hauling himself up on the bed with her and wrapping the thin motel coverlet around them like a tortilla. He’s still in his open jeans; she’s still in her dress and stockings; in the morning she’ll be rumpled, and it’s all very unhygienic, but he’s so drowsily warm in the dark and he holds her so close; she falls asleep, tucked under his arm just like the doll he called her.

* * *

Most of the Solos' ranch seems to be covered in soft, soundless wood chips, for which Finn is grateful. He stays away from open ground, and keeps his eyes and ears open. The light is coming from a barn, he sees, and it’s none too bright — maybe not even electric. The barn sits with the main house on a little hill, and the two buildings have back doors that face each other; Finn circles east of it, downhill into a little valley in the property. If he walks up the slope carefully, he can approach one of the little windows without being spotted or having to do more than crouch.

He’s putting one foot softly in front of the other, his eyes on the soft light in the window, when the night breaks.

Finn and guns don’t mix. That’s his rule. He knows guns too well. How they’re put together and come apart, how they weigh, the way they kick — he knows it all. And so he runs from them. That’s his impulse, when the gunshot in the barn cracks his ears. _Turn and run._ The sound of panicking horses makes it worse; it takes him back to places he never wants to go again.

But something has happened, there in the barn. Something very bad. Because the horses are shrill and frantic, but there is no human voice in the night. And lights are coming on in the main house, but not fast enough. Finn knows many things about guns, but above all he knows what they can do to a human body.

And so he runs without turning, through the back door and into the barn, where Thai Cô Bê lies on the dusty floor, her hand at her throat, soaked in her own blood, with the life draining out of her wide, frightened eyes.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **White records** — "White people" music as opposed to R&B, which would be "black people" music. "Mixed" jukeboxes weren't unheard of but weren't common, either.  
>  **The ton** — The 100 mph mark.  
>  **Chaparral** — A distinctive Southern California ecosystem of close-set bushes, scrubs, and small trees. Seen from a distance, it gives landscapes a sort of "fuzzy" or "patchy" look, as can be seen [here](https://songsofthewilderness.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/img_1807.jpg).
> 
> [Italian stiletto switchblades](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/2014_N%C3%B3%C5%BC_spr%C4%99%C5%BCynowy.jpg), complete with little cross-guards, were brought home by many American soldiers returning from WWII in Europe, and remained popular for decades afterwards.
> 
> ["Oh! My PaPa"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dWOsP_wly0) was by far and away _the_ top hit of 1954, and Eddie Fisher is, of course, Carrie Fisher's father.
> 
> "Roman Holiday" came out in 1953 and [this is the scene Rey is referring to,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExVWQ_I-elI) if you haven't seen it.
> 
> The 21 Missions of California are churches which were founded along the coast by missionary Franciscans led by Father Junipero Serra; indigenous people were forced to live and work by and for the Missions, disrupting their traditional patterns of life. Aside from forced labor and harsh corporal punishment, many native Californians died from conditions related to abrupt changes of diet and cramped quarters. Not all the Mission structures are left intact and not all those that remain are active parish churches; [Mission Santa Barbara](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/SB_MissionParkACPostelRose_20150916_%2822171897982%29.jpg), sometimes called "the Queen of the Missions," is both. 
> 
> [Manzanita](http://www.lostcoast.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/IMG_3891.jpg), [scrub oak](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ikNVfIUfCS0/UYwRu9fPLeI/AAAAAAAAE5Y/rodkmCbUhI8/s1600/scrub+oak.jpg), [lemonadeberry](http://www.carpwithoutcars.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/lemonadeberry.jpg), [California lilacs](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Ceanothus_impressus_1.jpg/800px-Ceanothus_impressus_1.jpg), [anise](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-32ygueWCMfo/TWcswCUG96I/AAAAAAAAAa8/hQD3YPMFZkM/s1600/Anise20.jpg), and [white sage](https://aliksir.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/thumbnail/600x/17f82f742ffe127f42dca9de82fb58b1/s/a/saap_web_1.jpg).
> 
> The story of the woman on the island is the story of [Juana Maria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juana_Maria), and it may be familiar to you from the fictionalized version told in Scott O'Dell's book _Island of the Blue Dolphins._ Santa Rita is the patron saint of the lonely.
> 
> "Oral copulation" was a sexual offense in California until the 1970s, article 288a of the Penal Code. In the 70s it was re-legislated; 288a now forbids oral intercourse with minors.
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/LinearAO3) and [Tumblr](http://linearla.tumblr.com) are places I can be found, if you would like to talk.


	6. The Unsigned Note

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’s just a few lines. Typewritten.” He gives his sister a worried look, and reads. “‘It would be a shame, wouldn’t it, if Olive Tree School ended up like Al Daran? But eucalyptus goes up like kindling. And you never know when lightning will strike.’ No signature.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A content warning for blood; if you want to skip it, you can move to the first break. There is also implied police violence later.

Her hand covers the wound in her throat, but Finn knows it’s there; he can see the blood flow between her fingers. His own throat feels crushed, as if strong hands were strangling him. _“Aidez-moi!”_ he cries hoarsely, and then again, louder, before he realizes that no one here but the girl at his feet could possibly understand what he means. _“Help! Somebody help! Ayuda! Por favor, ayuda!”_

He’s on his knees and stripping off his coat to press to her neck, but it’s too late, and he knows it. He’s known it since he saw her. But here he is, kneeling in blood, among stamping and shrieking horses in their boxes. He thinks he hears running footsteps and he prays it’s Poe. He presses as hard as he can, not wanting to look down at her, not wanting to see what he knows. 

It’s not Poe. It’s a short man in his undershirt who runs in so fast he almost stumbles on the threshold. “<Is it Blue Hammer? Blackbird?>” He stops dead when he sees Finn, and the girl, and the blood which is soaking through his pants to his skin. “<A doctor. I’ll call the doctor.>”

“<It’s too late. She — >” Sleep-deprived and horrified, his mind — which refuses to signal to his hands to stop pressing down on a wound no doctor can heal — stumbles on the verb. _Es_ for a permanent state, _está_ for a changeable condition. Death is permanent; death can’t be changed. But there’s an exception, isn’t there? Death can’t be anything but permanent, but there’s some other way to think of it, to make sense of the verb — but he can’t think and it doesn’t make sense and the words won’t come. There are tears in the man’s eyes.

He hears more steps; Poe is saying _my friend, my business partner, he must have misunderstood Rey but I don’t know —_ and a gruff man’s voice, Mr. Solo’s, says _if he’s hurt even one hair of my horses’ hides —_

What if they think he did it? He should have run. 

He looks desperately around the barn, trying for the first time to assess it professionally, as a crime scene. There are no bloody footprints, no sign of a weapon. If someone had run from the door Finn came in through, their tracks in the dust are already probably already covered by the stampede of people from the main house. He still can’t look down at her, and he still can’t stop pressing down. At the far end of the barn is the main barn door, the one horses come and go through. Is it his imagination, or is it open a little?

He looks up at the man with him, hoping for some clue, some sign, that won’t come from looking down. The small man steps closer, and Finn tenses, waiting for the man to accuse him, grab him, strike him. 

He kneels down on the bloody floor beside Finn, crosses himself, and begins to pray for the soul of the dead woman.

* * *

The desk calls Rey at six, like she asked. She wriggles out of Ren’s leaden arms and thanks the clerk in a whisper, leaning over the bedside table. She’s starting to ask for a long-distance line out when she feels his hands on her hips and puts the receiver down in a hurry as he pulls her back where she was. “Don’t go.”

“I’m not going. I just have to make a call.”

“It’s too early.” The light through the blinds is sunrise-pink and dimmed by the fog in the marine layer. The morning chill won’t burn off for hours and hours. And he is so warm.

“In New York it’s start of business.” One of his arms comes up around her waist, with a small, insistent jerk. The other slips down, and his thumb strokes gently at the nylon-covered hollow of her knee the way a cat-lover’s might stroke between his pet’s ears.

“Calling your stockbroker?” His voice is still a dozy mumble. She could go back to sleep. Let his chin press a flat spot into her hair and wake up when the light was gold and Ren’s hands might be more adventurous.

But she can’t. She’s an American woman, really she is; it’s a free country, and she can do what she likes. She knows that. But she has to make the call. If she doesn’t, she might miss the agent, and the agent might have news; they might have been found; they might need her help; she might have to go, right away, might have to change all her money and call Finn and Poe from the airport because they might be sick, malnourished, broken; she’s seen the pictures; everybody has — she scrambles out of his grip and sits on the edge of the bed, facing away from him, as she asks the clerk for the line.

She makes the call. There is no news. The agent says he hasn’t received her most recent payment, and she tells him she’ll check with the bank. When she hangs up, she realizes Ren’s not in the bed anymore; she’d been vaguely aware that he was moving, but she’d been — busy.

He’s standing by her bag in just his jeans, with her pocketbook in his hand. He doesn’t seem to notice the outraged cry she gives; he just sounds surprised: “Your name really is Reina Jaffa.”

“I told you it was!” She snatches her pocketbook out of his unresisting grip. He’s opened it to her driver’s license. 

“But you just said — I guess you lie a lot. For your job.” He stuffs his hands in his pockets, and she can see his fists are clenched.

“I didn’t lie to you.” She brushes past him to her bag. “How would you like it if I went pawing through your things?”

“You’re a detective. Don’t you go through people’s things all the time?”

“I do go through people’s things. Sometimes. When I’m working. But I’m ready for those people to hate me. Distrust me.” She swallows hard. “I guess maybe you are ready for me to do that. Now. _After.”_

She clutches the bag to her chest as she hurries to the bathroom. She has to change her clothes. And he can leave while she’s in there. They won’t have to say anything else, and she won’t have to watch him go. His bike is quiet; she probably won’t even hear it, in here.

 _New clothes. Clean clothes._ That’s what she focuses on. Not the crumpled, stained white dress she’s stripping off, not the ruined underwear she stuffs into the bottom of her bag. She’d packed a pretty cocktail dress in case she needed to go into the casinos, and a skirt with a sewn-in purse in case she needed to go to some of the rougher dives. She re-settles her strapless corselet — the boning has left deep lines in her flesh, deeper where he’d been holding her against him — and slips on the skirt and the peasant blouse that goes with it. It’ll be a little chilly in the morning fog, but she should wait until eight to call Poe, anyway.

She raises her chin at her reflection in the mirror as she combs her hair, not letting herself wince at the pain of yanking the fine teeth through all the wispy curls that have tangled at the back of her neck. He’d said it himself. _Some people can just go around trusting people. We don’t all have that luxury._ She should have made him go before she made her call; that’s her private business. It’s good, really, that he’d gone through her pocketbook; it hasn’t done her any harm, and it’s reminded her that she’s a fool to feel safe with him. Just because he rode with her and wiped her tears. Just because he made her come and held her while he slept.

When she opens the door Ren’s sitting on the bed with his head in his hands, not wearing a stitch more than he was when she went in. He looks up when he hears the latch. “I figured you already did.” His voice is thick.

“Did what?” She drops her pocketbook into the skirt’s purse and fastens the catch with a pointed snap.

“Hated me.” His dark eyes are lined with red, which makes sense for a man who drank half a bottle of saké and only got half a night of sleep. She hadn’t noticed before.

She looks at him, baffled. “What on earth would make you think that?”

Ren shrugs, like it’s obvious. “I’m no good. You know it. You got out of bed to make your call.”

“I had to make that call; it’s important. I let you take me home.” _Take me to bed._

“You liked my bike. Maybe you liked — what I did. Not me.” He gives her a searching, hopeless look. “Maybe you liked it last night. But now you’re sorry, right? You’re sorry you let me stay.”

“I’m just — no. I shouldn’t have made that call in front of you, that’s all.”

“Because you don’t trust me,” he says, like a prompter feeding an actress her line. He shifts his elbows on his knees and returns his head to hands. His fingers draw savage furrows through his hair. She remembers how soft it was, under her hands. “You’re sorry you let me touch you. You wish you’d made me leave.”

“I didn’t want you to leave. I had to _make_ myself get out of bed.” 

His head comes up with a bewildered expression. “You did?”

She shouldn’t have told him that; she should have been polite but firm and seen him out the door. But when she hears his voice — _you liked what I did — you let me touch you_ — she remembers how it all felt. She remembers how much she’d wanted to lie under his arm until the sun was as warm as his skin, and she feels it again. The lines of light on the room’s thin carpet are stronger now. Oh, she’s a fool. She puts down her bag and steps towards him.

“You didn’t trust me,” she says, and takes another slow step. “Maybe I shouldn’t trust you.” Another step. He sits up straighter, eyes fixed on her face. “Maybe I _should_ have asked you to leave before I made my call. But I didn’t.” Another step, and they’re almost toe-to-toe. “I do like your motorcycle. But I don’t go to bed with men I don’t trust; I don’t believe them when they tell me they’ll leave if I want them to. I believed you.” She slides her foot next to his, nudging it gently aside to make room for herself. He looks up at her, and she runs a finger over the pale skin of his naked back. “Did I make a mistake?” She strokes up his neck to his hair, and he shivers. 

“No,” he says, hoarse. “No, Rey.”

“So which is it?” she asks. “Be straight with me, Ren. Are you no good? Or should I trust you?” When she touches the soft shorter hair at the back of his neck, brushing it against the grain, his lips drop open. She bends down.

He lunges up to meet her kiss, his hands cinching around her waist, and she lets herself sink into his grip. He pulls her down to sit on his knee, dragging shaky fingers along her hips, tugging her closer, clumsy and coaxing. “Trust me,” he mutters fiercely against her bare shoulder. “Please, doll.”

She tilts her head, putting one arm around his broad shoulders, and he presses his lips against her neck, kissing the sensitive curve so softly she shivers. “Whoever gave you that mouth ought to be arrested,” she sighs.

“Yeah?” He dips it lower, dragging it over her collarbone. “You like my mouth? Did you like what I did with it?” His tongue traces and retraces the hollow of her throat in a rhythm she remembers.

“You know I did.” Sweat and sleep have put loose curls into his hair, and one of his hands moves from her hip to her knee.

“Tell me what I did to you, doll.” His hand goes under her skirt, his fingers lying along the length of her thigh, and his mouth pushes down the neckline of her blouse to find the blushing skin where her breasts begin. “Go on and say it.”

“You — made me come.” He drags her leg against him, like he did on the bluffs, pressing the softness of her against the swell of his cock. She flexes her muscle under his hand and he hisses against her skin as she squirms. “You put your mouth on me and you made me come.”

“I could do it again. You liked it, didn’t you?” His tone is arrogant and pleading at the same time, and his fingers move closer to the seam of her thigh, caressing the bare skin while his thumb rests on the reinforced band at the top of her stocking. “Don’t you want me to do it again?” His chin and cheek are rough, rasping through the thin cotton of her top as he rubs his face in the dip between her breasts that her corselet leaves undefended. 

“I — ” she says, and gasps as his fingers press up and under her panties. Her back arches, and he greets the swell of her breasts with a hungry kiss.

* * *

Her nails bite into his skin as he wets his fingers in her. The sharp little pricks light up his head like a luminaria. He wants her to scratch him bloody; he wants her teeth in his shoulder and her fists in his hair and her foot on his neck. He closes his eyes and inhales her scent, thick warm jasmine and animal darkness, with something like ripe plums that makes his mouth water. Or maybe his mouth waters because he’s working just one finger into her and she’s moaning and he remembers _exactly_ how she tasted on his tongue.

“Here,” he says. She whimpers when he withdraws his hand, and he feels lightheaded. His fingertips shine in the morning light the way her soft center had glistened in the dark. He leans back and puts them to her mouth, pressing down her tender pink lip into a pout. “Doll. I want you to know how good you taste.”

Her tongue slides out and swipes across the pads of his fingers. Then she leans forward and sucks them into her mouth, and he can’t fucking think; her tongue and her lips and her warm breath are the only thoughts he has. He pulls his hand back and she follows with her mouth, her thigh rubbing him gently through his jeans, making his shift his hips desperately; when he gets his fingers free he plunges them back under her skirt. He can hardly fit two inside her; he sees her bite her lip and feels her silky knees close tight around his forearm as he pushes in deeper.

“Please,” he says, and has to take a moment; she’s so tight around his fingers. “I want to fuck you; please, Rey.” She doesn’t answer, just tilts her head back so he can see her throat work. So she doesn’t have to say no. _It’s okay,_ he tells himself; she’s still holding his hand in place with her thighs, still licking her lips and sighing with his fingers inside her. “Do you like my fingers here?” She nods. It’s okay; it’s okay; maybe she doesn’t want to fuck him but he made her come; she said so, and maybe — he has his vision again, of her opening a door for him, pulling him in with her arm around his neck, only this time he doesn’t just come in; this time he walks her back to a bed like this one and she spreads her legs and begs him to make her come with his mouth _(she likes my mouth; she said she did; whoever gave you that mouth ought to be arrested; she said)_ and she pulls his hair and tells him to touch himself, lets him stroke himself onto her thighs. He sees it, in his mind’s eye, how he’d hold her still with one hand on her stomach while he watched the slow drip of white down her skin, and he shudders with how badly he wants it.

She’s rocking against his hand, her soft legs rubbing hard against his arm. If she gets a run in her stocking, maybe she’ll let him keep it. It would be like a shadow of her leg he can wrap around his hand when she’s not there, and his hips jerk again, just as she clutches his shoulder with a little cry and bears down on his hand so fiercely it almost hurts.

She slumps for a moment, but then she pushes him backwards, hard, and he goes like falling off a log, looking up at her flushed, determined face. Then he feels her hands on him and his eyes roll back in his head. She’s a little clumsy, but her hands are soft and he’s been grinding at her leg through layers of fabric; the feeling of skin on skin alone is almost enough to get him off. He grunts helplessly, and then her feels her lips open for him, and he absolutely should not thrust up into her mouth as hard as he can but he already has, he’s already grabbed the back of her neck and heard the soft choking sound she makes and come harder than he thinks he can survive in her hot little mouth.

She chokes again, but she swallows it all. “I didn’t mean to,” he gasps. “Rey. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“It’s all right,” she says, sitting up on the edge of the bed. But he doesn’t believe her; there are tears in her eyes, and he pushes himself up after her.

“I didn’t mean to,” he says frantically. “I didn’t even _want_ to be rough with you; I never even thought of it.” _But I did it. That’s who I am; now she knows. A sick, broken brute —_ He reaches hopelessly for her. This is it — this brush of his fingertips against her arm — she’ll never let him near her again — 

But she leans back into his touch, and doesn’t pull away when he grasps her arm like he’s drowning. “Some times it feels — more real,” she says. Her voice is distant. “When it’s rough.”

More real. _“Yes,”_ he says, and pulls her back against him, as close to his heart as he can get her, his arms so tight she huffs. “Yes. Yes. Real.” His eyes sting, and he pulls her up higher so he can bury his face in her hair. He thinks she must be able to feel the way his chest heaves, but she doesn’t say anything, just lets him hold her until his eyes are dry and his breathing is steady. He doesn’t think he shakes.

He’s on the point of falling back asleep when she pushes softly on his arm. “It’s getting late. I should call my ride.”

“Where are you headed?” It doesn’t mean she regrets letting him in her bed. She might let him take her where she’s going. Unless it’s Los Angeles, or —

“The Solos’ place.” 

He lets her go.

He watches through the open bathroom door as she fixes her hair and smoothes her clothes. Her clean little fingers run up the seams of her stockings. No runs. Her hands don’t tremble.

“Let me see you again,” he says, when she comes out. She hands him his shirt, and he puts it on. “I come down to L.A. sometimes.” _Or I can make time to, anyway._

“I’ll give you my answering service number,” she says, and searches in the purse that’s sewn to her skirt.

“Your answering service?” She doesn’t want to give him her number at home. For the first time the thought occurs to him that she might have a man in Los Angeles, and he tries to smother the bubbling of nausea and rage. _If he were any good she wouldn’t be here with me. He must be a worthless son of bitch. He doesn’t deserve her._

“I share a line with my upstairs and downstairs neighbors,” she says, and he steadies a little. That makes sense. He imagines nosy old women, the kind who’d make nasty remarks if they heard her talk to him, and he bristles on her behalf. Self-righteous biddies. She’s better than all of them. He glowers at nothing until she puts a card in his hand.

“So what should I say?” he asks. “‘Hello, this is Ren; I owe Miss Jaffa a pair of panties and I want her legs on my shoulders; can you take a message?’” 

She swats him on the shoulder, and hands him his jacket. “Miss Conners and her staff would be perfectly professional about it if you did. But don’t.”

He gets in a last kiss, and presses his hands against her waist, trying to fix the curve of it in his memory. Then he sits on his bike, watching her walk across to the office, and not starting the engine until the door closes behind her.

* * *

Rey opens Poe’s car door and sees his grim face, the stubble on his cheek, the lopsided knot of his tie. “What happened?”

“The jockey you drove here last night? The one Finn was following? She was shot dead in the Solo barn last night.” Rey stares at him in horror. He keeps his eyes on the road. He always does; he’s a good driver. “One in the morning. Finn found the body. The place is crawling with cops, and I spent four hours talking three deputies through all the reasons they shouldn’t throw Finn in jail. They’ve still got him down as a person of interest, though. He’s stuck in Santa Teresa until they figure out who did it.”

“Oh _no.”_

“It got worse, though — one of the sheriff’s men said something rude about Paige, and Mr. Solo socked him in the eye. It was all we could do to keep them from taking _him_ in. The cops are gone, but Mrs. Solo was reading the riot act when I left. Pío and Arturo tried to get Bibiana — that’s Arturo’s little niece — to go upstairs to the library, but I think she heard more of everything than was good for her. When I was leaving to get you she ran out and grabbed my hand. Arturo had to carry her back inside. I thought she hated me; she must be really upset.”

Poe parks them close to the house, and the instant he steps outside the car, a little blur of black hair and orange romper streaks through the garden and crashes into him, crying, “Poe-Poe-Poe-Poe-Poe!” 

“<Ai, Bibi, what’s the matter?>” The little girl doesn’t respond, just throws her arms around him. Poe gives Rey a helpless look, then taps Bibiana gently on the shoulder. “Bibi, this is Rey. Do you want to say hello?” All he gets is a slow shake of her head. “<You can talk to her in Spanish if you want.>” There’s no answer to that at all. Gently, Poe touches her hair. “<There’s been a lot of yelling, hasn’t there?>”

After a moment, Bibiana turns her head just enough to show her mouth. “<Nobody did my braids.>”

“<Don’t worry. Can I pick you up?>” She nods, and Poe hoists up in his arms and begins to walk towards the house. “<Oof! You’re really not a baby are you?>” Rey follows closely, looking at the place for the first time in daylight. “<Don’t worry,>” Poe is saying to his adorable burden, “<we’ll find Tío Arturo and he’ll — >”

He stops abruptly. Rey can hear the voices rising, first just as noise, and then as they rise even higher, the words. Mr. Solo is shouting, “ — sons of bitches don’t even care who killed Paige! I told them who must’ve done it; they didn’t give a damn! They just wanted to yank a black boy around in cuffs.” Rey casts a worried look at Poe, who doesn’t move. He hadn’t said anything about Finn being cuffed. Or hurt. “They don’t care about Paige, not anymore than they cared about Ben. When they saw she wasn’t white, it was just the same as when they found out Ben was — ”

“And what does your _punching_ one of them help? You think I didn’t want to break Sheriff Tarquin’s bony cheek for him when he called my son _damaged goods?_ But you can’t just solve things by hitting people, Han!”

“<Let’s go out to the pasture,>” Poe says briskly, making an about-face. “<Rey wants to see the horsies. I promised Blackbird a carrot.>”

Rey is happy enough to go see the horses, but she has other concerns. “Where’s Finn? He’s not hurt, is he?”

“Finn’s okay.” But he wouldn’t tell her if he weren’t, not where the little girl can hear. “He’s lying down in my room. Didn’t get much sleep.”

He doesn’t look like he got much himself, of course. His face remains drawn and worried, even as he keeps chattering soothingly to Bibiana about horses and how Rey will give her pretty braids, almost as nice as the ones Mrs. Solo does; at the sound of an approaching car, he whirls so sharply that Bibiana makes an unhappy noise. But it’s not the cops; the car is an ancient Ford, and the man pushing back the gate is wearing a brown civilian suit.

 _“Luke!”_ Mrs. Solo calls from the courtyard, her voice echoing off tile. Poe frowns, watching her come hurrying out; though she must have had a frantic morning, she’s still dressed impeccably in a high-necked dark-violet dress with soft loose sleeves, thick silver cuffs flashing on her wrists. “Han, Luke is here; come help with the gate!”

“I don’t _need_ help, Leila,” the man in the brown suit shouts as he climbs back into his car. 

As he pulls up behind Poe’s car, Poe carries Bibiana to Rey’s side. “<Do you know who Mr. Skywalker is, Bibi?>” He doesn’t get an answer, but Rey knows he’s doing this mostly for her benefit, not the little girl’s, even if he continues in a light, child-friendly tone. “<Mr. Skywalker is Mrs. Solo’s twin brother! He was a very, _very_ famous pilot, and a big hero in the war, before you were born. He doesn’t come visit much, does he?>”

That last sounds like a genuine question, but if Rey’s judging by the shocked and worried look on Mrs. Solo’s face, the answer is probably _no._ She embraces her brother, and, glancing downhill to where they stand watching, gestures impatiently for them to join her. As they walk towards the house, Han comes out, trying to twist his frown into a welcoming smile. He’s wearing yesterday’s clothes.

“Luke,” he says. “You sure know how to time a social call. You just missed the cop invasion.”

“The police were here?” Leila’s twin has a leonine head, his golden mane and beard streaked with grey. His shabby, old-fashioned hat sits precariously, as if it were looking for an excuse to fly away backwards. As Rey and Poe approach, he raises it with his left hand; the empty right cuff of his jacket is pinned neatly closed. _A big hero in the war._

“Paco,” he says, frowning. “You came back.”

“It’s kind of professional. But it’s nice to see you, Mr. Skywalker.”

“This is Paco’s business partner, Miss Reina Jaffa.”

“Rey,” Han puts in, as Luke offers a bow. “Pretty all right kid.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Skywalker.” His blue eyes are unsettlingly steady, almost staring.

“And this is Bibiana, Arturo’s niece.”

“I thought Arturo’s niece was a baby.”

“I’m not a baby!” Bibiana shouts. “I’m just _tired._ And nobody did my braids and there were mean guys here and Tío Han didn’t make them all leave for _hours.”_

Mr. Solo grimaces guiltily. “Sorry, mija. I did my best.”

“Han, what on earth happened?”

“What happened? I’ll tell you what happened,” he snarls. Mrs. Solo holds out a hand, and Poe lets Bibiana down so Leila can lead her into the courtyard, the rest of them following. “Those thugs from HUTT must have sent one of their boys — ”

“Sorry, Mr. Solo,” Poe interrupts. “Do you mind if I wake up Finn? Rey’s been worried about him.”

Rey starts to protest that he can let Finn sleep, but he ducks inside without minding her. Mrs. Solo seats herself on the edge of the dry fountain, and Bibiana stands in front of her expectantly, back turned. Leila’s ringed fingers begin to fly through the little girl’s hair. “I’m sorry; I never completed my introductions. Miss Jaffa — Rey, if you prefer? — this is my brother, Luke Skywalker. He’s the headmaster of a boarding school in Monte Vista, just a few miles down the coast. You probably drove past it with Han; it’s right on the river. You can see the olive trees from the freeway.”

“It’s called Olive Tree School,” Mr. Skywalker says. “We’re on sabbatical just now.”

For a moment, it seems to Rey that there’s a tension between Mrs. Solo and her brother; she seems to be paying more attention to Bibiana’s braids than they need, while he examines tile work he must have seen before. But then Poe comes out of the house with Finn, and Rey runs to him. His hair is beginning to curl, his clothes are borrowed and ill-fitting, and his eyes are bloodshot, with a hard look, but he doesn’t flinch when she lifts her hand gently to his cheek.

“Are you all right?” she whispers urgently.

He nods. “Just tired.” He looks more than tired, and she watches closely as he crosses the courtyard to the Solos. She doesn’t see any signs of injury, but Finn has always been a good liar.

“<Bibiana, ask Tío Arturo to tie your ribbons,>” Mrs. Solo says, and gives the girl a gentle push. Each adult in turn gets a suspicious look before Bibiana trudges slowly away, and Mrs. Solo introduces Finn.

“As I was saying,” Han says, “it’s clear as crystal what happened. It was the HUTT. They sent some heavy down here to try to cripple Blue Hammer ahead of the race. Paige’s window faced the barn; she must have caught him at it, and he must have… ” His voice trails away. “The best jockey in the business,” he mutters. “A real pilot. None of those punks are fit to shine her boots.”

“Maybe,” says Finn. He’s using his American accent. “Maybe it was the HUTT. They told me at the track they were mad because she was a woman and she rode in purse races.”

“A woman, and French Chinese. Some of them got it into their cracked skulls she was Japanese, but so what? You think any of those little boys was with us at Guadalcanal?” He spits on the ground. “They oughta leave the war to the men who fought it.”

“It is important to distinguish,” Luke says, “between those who are truly our enemies and those who once might have been, or might someday be.” Rey looks at him curiously. It sounds wise, like something you might read in a book, and she’s thinking of the surge of anger she felt towards the Japanese boy in Barstow, on his German motorcycle. But Skywalker’s voice is tired and mechanical, and his blue eyes flick absently back and forth between Han and some distant, indeterminate point.

“So they didn’t care, did they?” Han snarls. “They came to hurt a horse, and they shot a girl in cold blood. She was braver and better than any of them. And they left her to bleed out. Dirty, whip-happy snakes.” He turns away, swiping at his eyes.

“And you think it was this… hut?” Skywalker asks. Life is returning to his face. “Some sort of jockey gang?”

“Who else would break into the barn in the dead of night? Who else would shoot a little girl like that? I’m telling you — not fit to shine her damn boots.”

Mr. Skywalker reaches slowly into his pocket. “I came here to show you something. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence. I don’t know if I believe in coincidence.” He unfolds a thin sheet of paper, and hesitates. “Leila, I should warn you — well. You’re already sitting down, I suppose.”

“What is it?” Mrs. Solo sits up very straight on the fountain’s edge, and folds her hands in her lap.

“It’s just a few lines. Typewritten.” He gives his sister a worried look, and reads. “‘It would be a shame, wouldn’t it, if Olive Tree School ended up like Al Daran? But eucalyptus goes up like kindling. And you never know when lightning will strike.’ No signature.”

Poe makes a little hissing sound, and Han sits down beside Leia, wrapping his arm around her. 

“Let me see it.” Mrs. Solo’s voice is calm, and her hand is steady as Skywalker puts the note into it. That changes as she reads it over for herself. “Han. Han. Look.” She stabs at something on the paper.

“I didn’t want to bother going to the sheriff,” Mr. Skywalker says, bitterly. _“They_ won’t see anything threatening about that.”

“The spelling,” Leila insists. “They’re not just threatening. They’re — _mocking_ us.”

“It’s just a typing error,” Han says. “Anybody can make a mistake.”

“No. They know. How do they know? How do they know any of this?”

“Know what?” Poe asks, his brow furrowed. 

“There’s a lot of information in that note,” Skywalker says grimly. “A lot of little bits of code. You know this place used to be an orchard?”

“Yeah,” Poe says. “Al Daran. The sign’s still on the gate. But there was a fire, wasn’t there?”

“Arson,” Mrs. Solo says. She seems to have to force her voice out. “Varder’s men. They came and they burnt the orchard and the second house. In the night, while my parents were sleeping. We saved this house, but we couldn’t save the trees. Or my parents. And Varder was the senator, and he was on the committee, and so it was all hushed up. Tarquin helped him hush it up.”

“Varder?” Rey asks, her memory jostled. “I saw that name somewhere.”

“The highway,” Han says. He sounds light, as if it were just an ironic irritation, but she can see rage in his eyes. “They named our section of the highway after him. The hometown statesman.”

“Then it mentions eucalyptus; our buildings at Olive Tree School all have exterior decks made of eucalyptus wood. It aids concentration on sunny days. But you would have no way to know that if you hadn’t been on the property. The buildings are all set far back from the road; you have to come half a mile through the olive grove before you can even see them.”

“When did you get this note, Mr. Skywalker?” Poe asks.

“Paco is a professional detective,” Mrs. Solo says, looking up at him. She sounds proud. Rey’s heart hurts, just a little, but Poe is focused like a laser on the paper in Skywalker’s hand. “Mr. Askari and Miss Jaffa are his partners.”

“Better you than the sheriff any day,” Han says. “Tell him, Luke. He was always a good kid, and Leila’s already got him on the payroll.”

“I found it in the school’s mailbox this morning. There wasn’t any envelope. And it hadn’t been there when I had checked for mail the afternoon before.”

“And what were you noticing about spelling, Mrs. Solo?”

Her spine is rigid and her hand is steady again, but the paper crinkles under the pressure of her grip as she holds it out to him. “Lightning. They spelled it with an extra _e._ Lightening. Ben used to make that mistake all the time. In all his letters. His spelling was perfect. But he was always wrong about that one word.”

“It’s a typing error,” Mr. Solo says again. “People make them all the time. All the damn time.”

“No. I used to think maybe he did it on purpose, to tease me. It was in all his letters. Whoever wrote this, they’re trying to tell us that they know us. Know what’s hurt our family.” Her face twists. “It’s cruel. It’s _cruel.”_

Rey wonders where Ben could have been writing her from so often — the University of California is close enough; he could have driven up every weekend if he wanted. Maybe he went to some expensive prep school in New England.

“And you think this might be connected to Miss Tico’s killing last night, Mr. Skywalker?” Finn’s question is quiet and polite, but the man jumps as if someone had popped a balloon by his ear.

“Well,” he says. “I’m sure Han is right that the poor girl interrupted some attack on his horses. But it occurred to me that it might not have been aimed at a particular horse so much as at frightening the family. I believe it’s a fairly well-known intimidation tactic among mobsters, to kill animals.”

“That’s true,” Finn says. “I’m sorry, Mr. Skywalker, Mr. and Mrs. Solo. You should certainly employ my partners. But I’m not really at liberty to take your case. I’m afraid the law has stuck you with me, and there’s not much I can do for you. I don’t want to compromise your confidentiality. And I’m afraid I’m a bit knackered. Worn out. Do you mind if I lie down again for a minute or two?” No one else seems to notice the Britishism, but Rey bites her lip. 

“Of course not!” Mrs. Solo exclaims. “You poor man. You must be exhausted. Do you need anything?”

“No, thank you.”

“I’ll help you get to bed,” Rey declares. She needs to make sure he’s really okay. _If the rotten sheriff’s men in this town have hurt him…_

Well. She’s got a pimp’s knife. She can get a deputy’s gun.

* * *

Of course Finn’s not going back to bed. The family busy in the courtyard gives him an important chance. Rey scowls, even though he’s told her he’s fine, just a little tired and bruised. But she follows him quietly as he slips into Bê’s room. “Poe told me he didn’t see the police take anything out of her room. That means she took the suitcase with her when she left her room. Whoever she met in the barn, she was expecting them.”

He searches the room efficiently, and Rey, still frowning, helps. There’s a riding outfit at the foot of the bed, and boots tucked under it. Nothing else. No sign of the big suitcase that would be perfect for carrying blueprints.

“I have to go back to the crime scene. If there was blood on it, they might have thrown the case away. It was heavy; even if it was clean, it would have slowed him down.” And there probably was blood on it. There was blood everywhere. His suit is ruined, the little silk purse in the inner pocket stained beyond washing. It’d taken all of his misdirection skills to sneak it away from the deputies who took his jacket as evidence. By some miracle the contents were clean; he’s got them hidden under the mattress in the room the Solos have given him to stay in. They seem like good people, the Solos; a job’s a job, but he hates to sneak around on them. Especially when they’ve got such serious trouble. The son a suicide, the unofficial daughter murdered, the brother maimed and battle-neurotic, the parents lost to fire, the orchard up in smoke.

Rey’s hand settles on his arm. “Are you really all right.”

“Yes.” To distract her, he says, “Who do you think gave them the bad Arabic? It ought to be Ad-Daran.”

“The houses?”

“The _two_ houses,” he corrects, elbowing her. “I guess you’re in no position to judge anybody’s grammar, are you?”

“I have twice the vocabulary you do, monsieur the _Algerian.”_ But she’s smiling. Not so worried anymore.

“Go back to them,” he urges her. “They’ll think I’ve collapsed.”

“You’re really all right?” She’s frowning again.

“Right as rain. You should be with Poe; you know he gets with a new case. Go on.”

She squeezes his hand, and then her shoes click across the tile as he slips out the back. His own footfalls are as quiet as he can make them on his way back out to the barn. Most of the horses are out in the pasture. It would have been easy, last night, to take the plans out of the case and then dump the case in a manger; a preoccupied ranch hand might easily not notice. He begins to check the stalls. He can hear the little girl down the hill, berating the horses in Spanish, and someone is puttering with a tractor, not too far away. Probably the short man, he thinks, as he opens the next box to search; the man who’d prayed. He wonders if Bê was a Catholic. Whether it matters to the dead, what words the living say over them. _Rey would cry for me if I died. Say words over my grave. But she’s my friend. Do the dead care what strangers have to say?_ He’d pressed his coat to her wound, but he hadn’t looked down to see the last light in her go out.

Quietly, in French, he says, “<Peace to her soul.>”

“<Shut your mouth,>” a woman’s voice replies, and a knife point prods at a soft and fatal spot between his ribs. “<Murderer.>”

His mind freezes for a moment, groping for the words, true or false, which will get him out of this. But his instincts have been taught things, and his instincts remember them; he lets himself fall backwards, seizing and twisting her wrist above her head as he drags her down with him, and rolling when he hits the ground. This is how he finds himself once more on the floor of the Solos’ barn, kneeling over a woman, his heart going a mile a minute. But the woman is alive this time, squirming and fighting, her fierce eyes brimming with fury and framed by wide, lively curls.

“Hello, Rose,” he says. “I’ve been looking for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Marine layer** — A mass of cold and usually foggy air which develops over the ocean and rolls over most of the California coast over the course of the night. (This isn't unique to California, but it only happens in places where there's significant heat inland.)  
>  **Luminaria** — A decorative Christmas lamp made by punching holes in a tin can and setting a candle inside.  
>  **Pilot** — An ace jockey, particularly one who rides by hand.  
>  **Punk** — A clumsy or incompetent jockey.
> 
> The condition of death does take _estar_ in Spanish.
> 
> A corselet is a combination bra/girdle, often with the garter belt built in too. [Here](https://www.fashion-era.com/images/1950s/illamarquise1953.jpg) is one like the one Rey's got. Her skirt is [here](https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/api/collection/v1/iiif/84115/341447/restricted); her top is not unlike the one paired with the skirt, but lighter — something more like one of [these.](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRS67STCI1f_wEa5mG1uva5P9qq9-tmNZ8SE1y9U1gSEfLyF8LA)
> 
> After WWI they called it shell-shock, and now we call it PTSD, but after WWII it was called "battle neurosis." A vast number of American soldiers from both theaters of war suffered from it. If you have an hour, you can watch John Huston's powerful and long-banned documentary on the subject [here.](https://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/screening-room/let-there-be-light-1946#) Finn knows it when he sees it.
> 
> If you transliterated "الداران" letter by letter, you'd get "al daran," but in spoken Arabic the d in "daran" assimilates the l in "al", so ad-daran would be a better transliteration. In formal Arabic, nouns have a singular, a dual, and a plural. The dual is extremely easy to form -- you basically just slap an "an" on the end of the singular, as opposed to the plural, which is often a difficult-to-predict variation on the consonant root. Consequently, many colloquial forms of Arabic use the dual for all plurals. (For example: "talib" means student or scholar, "taliban" means two students or scholars, and "tulaab" mean three or more students or scholars. Does this mean that a group of violent fundamentalists claiming to be scholars made a grammatical error in naming themselves, accidentally implying that there are only two of them? Yes.) So basically Finn is teasing Rey by telling her her Arabic is low-class, and Rey is in turn reminding Finn that his vocabulary is deficient. I apologize for making a joke that requires a footnote this long.


	7. Horses and Men

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you think you can lose me?” That stops her. “Listen. You know some things I don’t. But I might know some things you don’t. If you do this yourself, I’ll follow you, and I’ll be there when you find them. You won’t be worse off if you tell me what you know and let me help you look.” _Huxley’s still my client,_ he tells himself. _It’s only Thursday morning. He needs the plans Friday, close of business. There’s still time. And when we find them, we’ll know who killed her._ “Work with me here, Rose.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was given an invaluable _two_ reads by [Bombastique](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bombastique/pseuds/Bombastique), who did her level best to keep me from making a fool of myself over Japanese honorifics, among other things. If I made a fool of myself anyway, it's my fault, not hers. You can find her on Twitter [here.](https://twitter.com/Bombastique1)

“<Traitor,>” Rose snarls at him. “<Lapdog. I wish she’d shot you the second she saw your face.>”

“Calm down and wait a sec, will you? I didn’t kill anybody.” 

He must be hurting her wrist, but she maintains her white-knuckle grip on the knife. “<Liar! You were following her; she was afraid of you.>”

“I was following her, yeah, but only because I was looking for you. I had no reason to kill her.”

“<You work for the West and their lackeys. You’d kill any of us.>”

“I don’t work for any West; I work for thirty-seven dollars a day, plus expenses, and nobody gets murder that cheap.”

She stops. She doesn’t let go of the knife, but her furious snarl eases into a frown, and her pink lower lip pouts. “<Why would you follow me?>” It seems suddenly to occur to her that he’s been speaking to her in English. “Are you American?”

“Sure, why not? Now are you going to drop the knife? This is going to be real embarrassing if someone walks in.”

She makes a face, like a child. The knife drops. He snatches it up and lets her go. It’s a crude weapon; Finn, looking at, thinks it’s made from a broken bayonet.

“Why would you look for me if you don’t work for the West?” she asks again, rubbing her wrist. “Did Mr. Huxley send you?”

“He hired me to look for you, yeah.”

“I should have known. You called me Rose.” She loops her hands under her knees and squeezes them; her stockings are torn and the cheap fabric of her red dress is crumpled. There’s a poignancy to her wretched clothes; she’s a pretty little lamb with dirty wool and a fraying knot of ribbon at its neck. “Well, I don’t have what he wants, so you can take your thirty-seven dollars and get lost.”

“He hired me to find _you.”_ This is where he should start trying to soften her up, talking about how how willing Huxley was to say he was sorry, how he wanted to be sure she was well, what a ghost of a man he was in their office. This is the moment for that.

 _Rey and Poe are the ones who go looking for trouble, who get a righteous idea and risk their damn fool skins over it._ Finn doesn’t like trouble; he doesn’t like guns; he doesn’t like sticking his neck out. But trouble and guns make him afraid, they don’t make him sick to his soul. Not like having a frightened young girl die under his hands. _Might keep me safer from the cops to find out who did it. Might help me find the blueprints; whoever killed her must have taken them._

“Whoever she was meeting must have been the one who shot her. Do you know who it was? Did you see him?” She shakes her head, looking at her knees. “Do you know who he was buying the blueprints for?”

She shows him her fearless eyes, bright tears swelling in their corners. “You don’t understand anything.”

* * *

“The question is,” Poe says, looking at the note on Leila’s lap, “what do they want? You say you think it’s an intimidation tactic, but what are they trying to intimidate you into doing? Has anyone tried to get you to do anything you didn’t want to do?”

Leila laughs, a short, bleak chuckle. “All my life. But why this should start out of nowhere I don’t know. Unless —” She frowns, and lowers her voice, as if she were afraid of being overheard. “Poe, you were asking me last night about Orson Krennick. Who told you about him?”

Poe’s throat tightens, but he refuses to let himself blush. Mrs. Solo may know why she chose to hire him in particular, but he hopes she hasn’t told her husband or her brother. “Nobody of much consequence.”

“Krennick is — he was a figure of some distinction around here. A figure with some enemies, too.” She meets his eyes, which he takes as a sign to stay quiet about the connection, whatever it may be, between the man and her dead son. “He was found dead two weeks ago at the foot of his stairs. He wasn’t a young man, and it seemed reasonable to the police that he’d simply fallen. If he didn’t fall — or if the fall isn’t what killed him — your inquiries on my behalf — ”

“No,” Poe interrupts her. This, at least, he thinks he can reassure her about. “I don’t think that’s likely, Mrs. Solo. The people I spoke to, they might have told somebody I was asking, but I didn’t mention you, and they didn’t know me from Adam. _Even if_ they told someone, and that person somehow figured out you were behind the asking — to do that finding out, then go to a home or an office to type the note, drop it off at Olive Tree, then come here to shoot a horse — it’s a heck of a reaction on not much notice.”

Rey comes back out of the house, stepping a little lighter than when she went in. Finn must have reassured her he wasn’t hurt.

“In any case,” Skywalker says with a frown, “I don’t see why anybody should imagine we of all people give two pins about how Krennick met the Creator.”

“I don’t think Krennick comes into it at all,” Mr. Solo says, “though I hope he’s keeping his feet warm in Hell.” 

“Luke, you haven’t been doing any… business deals lately, have you?”

“No, of course not, Leila.”

“Has anybody _offered_ a business deal, then?”

Skywalker frowns, and narrows his lips. “Mr. Beckett has been sending me some letters. I haven’t read any of them.”

Han gets up, leaving Leila to sit alone, and begins to pace. “Yeah, well, maybe you should go back and give that a shot. Do you have a working telephone in that ruin?”

“It’s not a ruin, Han.” Luke’s nostrils flare. “We’re on sabbatical.”

“Yeah, I know all about your _sabbatical._ Is it eight years now, or — ”

“The ground requires spiritual cleansing, Han.”

“Oh, never mind. Does your phone work, or will you have to drive all the way back here to tell us what Beckett has to say?”

“Hang on,” Rey puts in. “Who’s Beckett?”

“He’s a real estate agent,” Mrs. Solo says. “Well. Of a kind. A land speculator, you might say.”

“He’s a con and a crook, _you might say,”_ Han snarls. “Shady as the day is long, and I should know. But land is his game these days. Land, and water. I’ll lay ten dollars some source told him there’ll be water in the Salsipuedes next year and he wants Olive Tree for the water rights.”

“Han,” Leila says. There’s a warning in her voice, and Poe wonders what it’s for. Speaking bluntly about Beckett? Or offering a bet?

“There won’t be water in the Salsipuedes,” Luke says. Like he knows. Like they should know too.

“Mr. Skywalker,” Poe asks, “are you familiar with typewriter analysis? Would you be able to tell us with confidence whether or not the same machine that wrote Mr. Beckett’s letters might have written the note you got? The paper’s much thinner on the note than I think you might use for business correspondence, but there might still be some tells. And of course if one’s a Smith Corona and one’s a Remington… ”

Skywalker nods. He makes Poe uneasy. He’d been kind of famous, even when Poe was a kid: the man who risked his life to save the city. A little bit of a nut, some sort of a spiritualist or other, but Santa Teresa breeds Anglos like that by the dozen. And he was the first to climb back into a plane at the word of Pearl Harbor. But then — well, then Poe’d been in Europe, and his mother wasn’t the kind to write any bad news; he doesn’t know what all went on. It’s not that Poe doesn’t know men whose souls were changed by the loss of a limb. But this feels different. This edgy, distant crank isn’t the man he remembers.

“I don’t know the manufacturers’ marks,” Skywalker says, “but I have some powers of observation, and I think I should be able to tell you if it’s a match. And yes, Han, my telephone does work. I think.” He holds out his hand for the note. His sister seems reluctant to surrender it. “If I can’t get the operator I’ll just go down the road.”

Mrs. Solo puts the note into his hand with a long breath. He folds it away into his coat.

“Now that that’s settled,” Mr. Solo says, “I’ve got some horses to see to. Rey, Poe; come on down to the pasture with me. I want you to meet Blue Hammer.”

* * *

Mitaka’s standing outside his motel room door, practically vibrating, when Ren pulls up. “Where have you been?”

“Out with a girl.” _You’re not the only one who can get one, Donny._

“What girl?”

He wants to say, _the one from the desert, in the sweet white dress, the one you didn’t want me talking to._ “None of your business, is it?”

“We have to go.”

“Fine by me.” He parks the bike and climbs off, motioning for Mitaka to let him through to his door. “I gotta get my case, though. And I paid the clerk for a week.”

“Not out of town. Up to the Krennick place.” Mitaka shifts on his feet. “Oka-san wants to see you.”

“What for?”

“Just to talk.”

It’s not like he expected to be inducted immediately, and maybe if he can get his mistakes out of his system early, maybe he’ll escape with his hands intact. “What about?”

Mitaka looks away. “Not sure. I think maybe — your family.”

_“What?”_

“I don’t know for sure — ”

His grip on Mitaka’s tee shirt collar almost tears it. “How the _fuck_ does he know who my family is?”

He’s pulled him close, but Mitaka keeps his head turned away. As if that makes it better. “<He’s the oyabun; I can’t keep secrets — >”

“<How did the fucking topic arise, Daichi?>”

“<He asked — he asked if I knew anyone who knew anything about horses — >”

Ren feels like he’s drowning; he pulls on Mitaka as if he were a floating branch that might save him. “<So you brought up my _family?_ Why would you tell him that?>”

“<Because you _do_ know about horses! And anyway you told us what to put in the note, and you told that girl — >”

“<That’s completely different!>” His hand twists, tightening the collar around Mitaka’s throat. “<Were you listening to what I said to her? I didn’t tell her — >”

Mitaka shoves at his wrist and elbow. “Let go of me!”

He does. It’s too late. “You’ve ruined everything for me.”

The fabric of the shirt is distorted by his hands. Mitaka tries to settle it smoothly. “Don’t say that.”

He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t say that. It’s his own fault. But he doesn’t want it to be. He wishes it weren’t. “You knew I was trying — ”

“What, to be a man without a family?”

“<You said the chivalrous organization could be my family.>”

“<They can.> They just — they would have wanted to know where you came from anyway.”

Ren swallows. Mitaka is being reasonable, and he is not. “Fine. Fine. Let’s go, then.”

It takes him three tries to restart the Vincent.

* * *

Finn leans forward. “So tell me. If I don’t understand, tell me.”

“No. You work for Arm — Mr. Huxley. I know what he wants.” Rose sounds sad and bitter.

He edges closer to her. “He really does care about you. He said that if I found you, and you didn’t want to come back to him — he’d want to know that you were well.”

Her head jerks, eyes wide. “Come _back_ to him?”

“He says he doesn’t know what his wife did, but he’s — he says he apologizes to you on her behalf.” 

Rose’s face has gone blank. Finn is very familiar with blank faces; this isn’t the trained immobility of a soldier, or the burned-house emptiness of a man who’s seen too much. In places where you can be dragged out of a crowd and punished for the look on your face, for _impertinence,_ for _disrespect,_ some people learn to wear a mask that smiles or simpers or cowers. Those people are clever, and those people survive. But not everyone can bend their spirit or their face that far, and those people wear the stone-blank look Rose is wearing now.

_(Forgive her, sir; she’s just a child — )_

“He apologizes. He wants me to go back.”

Finn should say, _He misses you. He looks like the husk of himself._ Those things are true. “Yes.” She doesn’t answer. He inches a little closer. “Who was your sister meeting? You say I don’t understand what happened, but it seems pretty obvious that whoever it was, they double-crossed her.”

“Maybe.” She climbs to her feet, dusting herself off, and starts to walk out of the barn.

He runs to put himself in front of her. “Where are you going?”

“I can’t give up. My sister wouldn’t.”

“So you think you can find the plans?”

She swallows. “I have to try.”

She looks lost and scared. After a second, Finn shrugs. “Okay. Lead on.”

“I’m not taking you!”

“Do you think you can lose me?” That stops her. “Listen. You know some things I don’t. But I might know some things you don’t. If you do this yourself, I’ll follow you, and I’ll be there when you find them. You won’t be worse off if you tell me what you know and let me help you look.” _Huxley’s still my client,_ he tells himself. _It’s only Thursday morning. He needs the plans Friday, close of business. There’s still time. And when we find them, we’ll know who killed her._ “Work with me here, Rose.”

* * *

Rey reluctantly follows Poe and Mr. Solo down the hill, away from the house. Not that she doesn’t want to see the horses — but it’s obvious Mr. Solo wants to say something he doesn’t want his wife to hear, and Rey doesn’t like it; it makes her uneasy.

“The second house was on the other hill?” Poe asks. His voice is hesitant. He grew up here; that he doesn’t know and seems afraid to ask tells her something about this place.

“Yeah,” Han says slowly. “It was wood, that house. Meant for the pickers, but the Orreagas slept there too, during the season. Leila was sleeping in the main house; when the fire started she ran down the road to Ben Kenobi for help. She thought her parents had time to get themselves out.”

 _They didn’t,_ he doesn’t need to say. Rey looks up at the hill, as they follow the road that wends its way around it. Most of the ranch is either planted ground or soft chips and sawdust, but the second hill is neither-nor — dusty earth, patched with dry native plants. Returned to nature. 

“Why was the fire set?” Rey asks. She has her ideas.

“Hard to say,” Han says, but Rey’s not put off. She’s not from here; she can ask what she likes.

“Did Varder have something against Mrs. Solo’s family? Who were they?”

“They were good people, and they had more than some people thought they should.” Oh, Rey knows this story all right. “I think the fire was just meant to scare them off, so they’d sell their land cheap. But I don’t think Varder or Tarquin or Krennick or _any_ of those bastards gave a damn that the Orreagas and their braceros died. But Leila survived, and old Ben and Pío helped her save the main house. Pío had all the paperwork in the library; Leila was the heir.”

“Why did it need paperwork?” Poe asks.

“She wasn’t their daughter by blood. They were California Spanish, and the adoption kept getting tangled up in the courts. But they took her to Mexico and adopted her there, then made the courts here live with it. And they wrote her into their wills, ‘course. After old Ben told her it was arson, she decided she’d die before she’d sell.” He smiles a little, fond and admiring. “Or anyway that she’d see them all dead first.”

That certainly fits with Rey’s impression of Mrs. Solo. “So it makes sense, then, that somebody might be trying to do the same thing to her brother, to try to scare him into selling.”

“Maybe. Maybe.”

On the far side of the empty hill, where there must once have been a sea of trees, there’s a huge paddock, where horses run in leisurely little jaunts or stand sociably about, and an equally huge riding ring, separated by a gate. In the ring, a man on a tractor is carefully smoothing the ground into perfect flatness. He nods to the men, and touches his hat to Rey.

“That’s Arturo,” Han says. “He does everything around here that I don’t. All these fillies worship the ground he walks on. Don’t you, girls?” he asks, as a brown horse comes to examine them over the low fence.

“Oh,” Poe says, “oh, there’s Blackbird.”

She’s never heard him sound like that before. Sometimes, in the days when he and Finn used to share a bed, he used to sound this light, but she’s never heard him sound so _young._ She’s seen him around horses, of course, back in the desert; he was brilliant with them, light and fast, but he’d always seemed practical about it, no more emotionally attached than she’d been to the Norton motorcycle.

(Not that she didn’t care for that piece of junk. It was good to her, in its rattle-trap way.)

Han slips the gate open and gestures them through the narrow opening he allows. “Don’t you want to say hello?”

Blackbird isn’t true black, but she’s a very dark brown. Poe almost runs to her, and she turns her head to meet him, looking surprised, her big sharp ears far forward.

“Hey girl,” Poe says. “Remember me?” She looks at him, one eye and then the other, and Rey thinks maybe she does; certainly she seems very happy to let him stroke her glossy coat as she sniffs his brilliantined hair. “Sorry I forgot the carrot.”

The mare’s ears perk up again at the word, and Rey laughs. “You know horses?” Han asks her.

“A little?” she says, hesitantly. “Not thoroughbreds like this, but I’ve ridden some, if that’s what you mean.” Those poor horses. Sick, most of them, and half-starved, Uther-Platt trying to squeeze the most use out of them for the least feed. At least she’d been too thin to burden them much.

“Rey’s a good rider,” Poe says. He’s being generous; Rey is a serviceable rider, and Poe could knock her off the horse and catch her again. But he sounds half-distracted; Blackbird’s neck is arched over him, as if to be better admired. “Want me to hand you up, Rey?”

“I’m wearing a skirt.” The thoroughbreds’ backs are a lot wider than the Vincent’s engine.

“Speaking of riding,” Han says uneasily. “The thing is. Look. That’s Blue Hammer.” He points. On the far side of the meadow, a young mare, as dark as Blackbird, but with a white star on her face. She raises her head, sniffing the air, then lowers it, then jerks her head again, stepping lightly backwards. “She’s the best runner I have. Fast as anything. But she’s — picky. I can’t just put any sack-of-barley jockey on her. And I — ”

There’s some small commotion among the horses. Arturo has parked the tractor and is walking towards them. Han’s right; the horses do all seem to love him. A number who’d been indifferent to the three of them perk up their heads and begin to amble over to the short man. Blackbird only seems to have eyes for Poe, though, even as Arturo approaches.

“<You came empty-handed, didn’t you?>” When Poe nods sheepishly, Arturo sighs and seems to conjure half a carrot from nowhere, slipping it into Poe’s hand. Blackbird eats it from his hand with an expression of profound equine contentment, and Poe strokes her soft black nose.

“I was just telling them how picky Blue Hammer is,” Han says. “How I don’t know if she’ll take a rider who isn’t Paige.” He sounds bleak.

Arturo crosses himself. “<May she rest in peace. Poor girl.>”

“And the thing is.” Han swallows. “The thing is. I don’t like to say it in front of Leila. But it’s — expensive, running this place. And I — may have made things a little harder for us. Just, you know.” He scratches behind his ear, grimacing. “A little risk here and there.”

“<You gamble,>” Arturo says flatly. “<You gamble with your wife’s money and your horses’ living.>”

“I do. Yeah. I do. But the Santa Anita Derby — the purse is hundreds of thousands, you know? And it was ours, for sure. Blue Hammer — you’d be nuts to bet against her. Or you would have been. Until now. If I have to hire some little punk who lives by his whip to ride her — she’s as likely to throw him off as to cross the finish line.”

“<What about that kid in Santa Rosa? You thought he had promise.>”

“What, Cass? Maybe. Maybe.” Mr. Solo is silent for a moment, eyes still stuck on Blue Hammer. “The thing is. If I don’t make some money out of Sunday, I might. I might have to sell some horses.” Are there tears in his eyes? “Sell most of the horses.”

Poe looks up sharply from the trance he’s been in, petting Blackbird’s flank. “What?”

“I’ve had some offers. I’ve always got offers; these are some of the most valuable horses in the country! But I wonder if some people who are making new offers might know — ”

“<Speaking of,>” Arturo interrupts, “<turn around.>”

They all turn. A dark, handsome man in a crushed hat is letting himself in at the gate. “Great,” says Han with disgust. “D.J.”

* * *

The mid-morning sun turns the Victorian house’s big bay window into a sheet of bright white light as Ren climbs the stairs behind Mitaka. After the formalities, Oka-san beckons him closer.

“<Take off those glasses,>” he says. “<You’re not fooling anyone; we know you’re a foreigner.>”

He puts the shades away. He hadn’t really been trying to fool anybody; he knows his nose gives him away, and his too-brown hair.

“<That’s better. Now. Tell me, how does it happen that you speak Japanese? Not well, of course, but still, Japanese as we speak it can’t be easy for you.>” His tone and his pronouns are both condescending, bordering on contemptuous. Ren bristles, and tries not to show it. It’ll get better. He’ll be this man’s subordinate. He’ll be his family. It might not be pleasant, but it’ll be _better._

“<I knew Mitaka Daichi from when we were both boys, sir. He taught me a great deal, after the war.>” Did Donny just shift his weight? Ren keeps his eyes down, yanking on his mind like the reins of a shying horse. “<Then, I went to college. I studied the language there, and, because the college was in Los Angeles, I was able to obtain a number of books in Japanese, which also helped me to learn.>”

“<What sort of books?>”

“<Mostly modern literature, sir.>”

“<Oh yes? Whose work did you read? Abe Kōbō?>” Oka’s voice is venomous. Kōbō is a communist, Mitaka says. A traitor.

Ren licks his lips. “<I prefer Mr. Mishima.>”

“<Oh?>” The older man climbs out of his chair and approaches Ren where he sits on his knees on the floor. “<And why do you prefer him?>”

“<He is interested in things that interest me. Beauty. Strength. Honorable life. Honorable death.>”

“<I know men who know Mr. Mishima.>”

“<I’ve heard that, sir.>”

“<Mitaka-kun tells me you know something about race horses.>”

“<Some things, sir.>”

“<I have members of my organization who are involved with gambling on horses. But I am becoming interested in the possibilities of owning race horses. Buying them and selling them.>” He returns to his chair. “<I’m told Skywalker left his property very hastily this morning. That he seemed very alarmed. I appreciate your assistance in this matter, and perhaps we will have reason to thank you for further assistance.>”

* * *

D.J. seems in no rush to get to them. Is it Rey’s imagination, or are the horses moving to the edges of the field, as if they’d prefer to avoid him?

“Mr. Solo,” he says, waving. “Arturo. So nice to see you.” He’s got a slight speech impediment, and a very unconvincing smile.

Han sounds equally insincere. “Yeah, you too, D.J.”.

“<What do you want, Jimenez?>” Arturo demands. Blackbird snorts, and backs away, ears back. Poe reaches a hand to steady her, but she evades his touch, and he lets her go.

“Just came to offer my condolences,” D.J. says. “Terrible news, about that little girl who worked for you.”

“Yeah,” Han says, “it is. And I’m wondering how you heard it. Not that I don’t appreciate your sympathy, you understand.”

D.J. shrugs. “I happen to take my coffee at a spot where the sheriff’s men take theirs. They needed an extra cup, coming out here at an unholy hour of the morning and all.”

“Poor things. Had to wake up so early to cuff a bystander and then drive off.”

D.J. purses his lips. “Oh? You don’t think they did their jobs?”

“When I call an officer of the law to the scene of a crime, I expect him to, I don’t know, look for footprints? Search for a gun? If Paco and I hadn’t held their hands and walked them through it, they’d have arrested an innocent man and called it a day.”

“Wouldn’t have thought I’d hear the day Solo was complaining about the diligence of the Santa Teresa law.”

Han’s face goes dark and he steps towards D.J. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

D.J. puts up his hands. “Nothing, nothing.” But when Han steps back, he adds, “Just, I wondered if maybe they thought they were doing you a favor, not asking too many questions. Or is it only the Coast Guard — ?”

Arturo steps back, shocked. Poe grabs Han by the arm, but that’s not going to stop this. The macabre detail of citing the Coast Guard, when Ben Solo drowned — it’s sadistic, and he’s looking for a fight. Why? What’s he after? Rey steps between the two men. “Hello! I’m Miss Jaffa, by the way; Mr. Solo was just showing me his horses. Not sure I caught your name.”

“Jimenez. But you can call me D.J. Everybody does.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m sure Mr. Solo’s glad you brought your condolences. Did you have anything else you wanted?”

D.J.’s eyes rove over the field and the horses. “No. I’ve got some new blood in town, some new interested breeders — but no need for business on a sympathy call, is there?”

“No,” Mr. Solo grates. “None. You’ve said what you came to say, D.J.” Poe’s still holding to his arm, both men stiff with tension. As D.J. turns and makes his way back to the gate, Rey exhales.

“What a bastard. And he wants to buy your horses?”

“He wants to buy them cheap and sell them dear, and never give a damn how they do. He thinks he can come around here an insinuate I’ve got something criminal going on — talking about the Coast Guard like he knows something — like he can blackmail me into lowballing — ”

“Blackmail?” Rey asks sharply. They might be ashamed of their son, but enough to be blackmailed over?

“He hasn’t got anything,” Han says. “I’m clean.” _I’m_ clean, he says, not _we’re_ clean. So it’s not about Ben Solo after all.

“Mr. Solo,” she says, “We’re on your payroll; we can keep your secrets. If someone’s trying to strong-arm your family into something, whether it’s by threats, or violence, or blackmail — ”

“It’s nothing,” Han says stubbornly. “Just D.J being a heartless asshole. Nothing to do with anything. Let’s go back to the house.”

“<Wait,>” Arturo says. “<Let’s see Blue Hammer, first. If we don’t smell too much like Jimenez for a horse to bear.>”

* * *

Finn feels Rose’s eyes searching his face. He makes himself look back steadily, trying to escape the feeling of being read. At last she takes a deep breath. “All right. For now. I’ll tell you what you need to know. Nothing else. But I have a condition.”

“Yes?”

“Give back my knife.”

He considers. He sees where this is going — she gets his help finding the case with the plans, then she knifes him and runs off with the case, leaving him empty-handed and possibly dead. But, given the advantage of complete surprise, she hasn’t managed to much as nick him; she may be scrappy, but he’s got training and the reach on her. And next time, he’ll be ready. 

“Fine.” He holds it out and lets it drop; she retrieves it from the floor with a scowl. “Who was your sister meeting?”

“I don’t know. She made the arrangements herself.”

“And she didn’t tell you?”

“If you know too much, you can give away too much. I don’t know who she was meeting, and she didn’t know what was in the case.”

“All that time she had it, she didn’t open it?”

Rose frowns. “I only gave it to her last night.”

“What? I saw it with her at the racetrack yesterday, and this morning it’s missing.”

“Oh, you mean her valise. No, that didn’t have Mr. Huxley’s papers. I had them in the case. It’s big, but it’s narrow.” She shows the dimensions of a portfolio in the air. “Her valise had the payment.”

“Payment for what?”

“Transit. She won money, as a rider. Sometimes I won money, betting on her. We saved it.” She licks her lips. “There were four thousand dollars in cash in her valise. Her contact tonight was going to take money to bring her and Mr. Huxley’s papers — where they needed to go.”

Finn shakes his head, trying to clear it. “Let me get this straight. You ran away from Mr. Huxley’s, stealing his plans in a case. Then you went — not to your sister in LA? Where?”

She shrugs. “I stayed here in Santa Teresa. There’s an abandoned house we meet sometimes; I stayed there. I knew she would come here to train with the race horse; every night I took the case and walked to the back road to see if the light was on in the room they give her. When I saw that it was, I came down and I left it in the garden outside her room.” She swallows. Her eyes look sore. “She came down. She told me she was being followed, that the French had set an African man on her tail. She told me to get away. For my own safety. She was looking out for me. She made me leave. I was walking back to the back road when I heard the shot. I thought _she_ had shot someone. I turned back to see if she needed my help — but then there were people running, and — and — I was afraid, I was too afraid; I ran back to the road and watched, but then there were police, and the ambulance, and I thought it _had_ to be that my sister had shot someone, but then they took her away — I saw her hair — ”

She covers her mouth with both hands, smothering a sob. Tears roll down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” Finn says helplessly. “I’m so sorry. I tried to help; I tried to apply pressure, but it was too late, and the wound was too serious.” She looks at him, over her hands, and impulsively, he brushes his fingers through the curls on the side of her head. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “But when we find the blueprints, we’ll know who did it, won’t we?”

She nods, and wipes her eyes. “And she wouldn’t have stopped. Not for anything. And I won’t either.”

* * *

Blue Hammer does let them approach. Poe is surprised to feel Arturo press another carrot into his hand, but he also holds the four of them a little back from the racehorse.

“<She is particular,>” Arturo says. “<And she can’t have just any jockey. You need someone who really feels how the horse is feeling, so they don’t just point the nose, and whip. You know?>”

“<Right,>” Poe says, frowning. He’s seen men who ride like that. A horse isn’t a car, and even a car, you have to listen to.

“<A horse runs with his whole body. You have to ride with your whole body, too. You have to know when your horse needs your weight to move.>”

These are old litanies, familiar to Poe from childhood, and he repeats what he knows comes next, watching the beautiful animal watch them. “<You have to know what your body is saying to a horse. You have to make sure you don’t ask more than he can give. You have to make sure you don’t ask for what you don’t want.>” Blue Hammer dances in place, foot to foot.

“<Your horse has to respect you. Your horse has to understand you,>” Arturo says, and pushes on Poe’s back. 

He holds out the carrot on the flat of his hand, and feels the horse’s soft mouth against his palm. She eats quickly, nervily, but when she’s done, she doesn’t back away. Han completes the recitation, “<But the best is if your horse can love you.>”

“<You had the makings of a fine jockey, before the war,>” says Arturo, and Poe’s head jerks up.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. <I’m too big; I’m too old!>”

Arturo shrugs. “<I’m not saying you’re a prize. But there are bigger and older in the game. And you know how we train our horses.>”

“And maybe better him than some punk I can pick up off the street in L.A., eh?” asks Han.

“<Maybe. You should call up the county to that kid in Santa Maria. But _Poe_ here should at least get on her.>”

“I’ll get her saddle,” Han says, but Rey, the little barbarian, has already run to Blue Hammer’s side and pulled him with her, and he remembers this, remembers how they rode in the desert, and when she offers her hand and her bent leg, he uses her weight to step lightly up and over, and there he is, for the first time in seven years, looking between the ears of a horse. He settles his weight, and feels the animal shift beneath him; he shifts himself, like an answer to her movement, and he remembers, with a sudden pang of happiness, how it feels to be good at this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Water law is a complicated and hot-button topic in California; it is entirely possible to be a water lawyer in CA in the way that you might be a tax lawyer or a real estate lawyer in another state. Vicious battles, legal and illegal, are fought over water rights, or riparian rights, as they're officially called, and many struggles that seem bizarre from the outside turn out to be water battles when closely examined. (You may have seen this movie called _Chinatown?_ "Kind of Chinatown vibes except fuck Roman Polanski" was a discarded tag for this fic.) In California, what we call "rivers" are often actually something like channels in extremely large deltas — complicated networks of water running to the ocean from different sources. Because the networks are so complicated, it's very easy for a small change upstream to cause water to be diverted away from one channel for long periods of time, leading to a dry river bed. Sometimes the rivers never come back, but even then, the river beds are channels for flash floods, and it would be very, very foolish to imagine that a river will remain dry forever.
> 
> Ren is worried about keeping his hands intact because the traditional way in which yakuza apologize to their superiors for mistakes is by cutting off a joint of the little finger, or sometimes the whole finger entirely. According to the (one) book I read, this is meant to harken back to a tradition of weakening the sword grip of the man who's erred.
> 
> Japanese varies its pronouns depending on who is talking to whom. Japanese as spoken by a yakuza is also very different from Japanese as Ben would have learned it in a textbook at UCLA, where it would probably have been taught with diplomacy or administration in mind. It's also very different from literary Japanese. The two writers Oka-san names are a political test he's posing for Ren; Abe Kōbō was indeed a communist, though becoming disenchanted with the Party around this time. Mishima Yukio, however, was a right-wing author who was nostalgic, as many yakuza were, for the days before Japan lost the war, and for the idea of Japanese supremacy. As Bombastique rightly pointed out to me in her notes on this chapter, he wasn't actually _that_ extreme a right-winger in 1954 (he died in an absurdly stupid coup attempt in 1970). But I kept him in the story because Ben absolutely would like Mishima, who was sexually attracted to men and nostalgic for the days of empire, when beautiful, honorable men died beautiful, violent deaths. He was also famously a body-builder, obsessed with his own strength, and EXTREMELY dramatic.
> 
> I probably don't need to tell you that four thousand dollars was an enormous sum in 1954. Paige wasn't just taking a plane to Boston.
> 
>  **Programming note:** I'm sorry this took me a little while to write. I've been getting headaches looking at screens recently, and this isn't the only kind of writing I have to do. I apologize if the update schedule gets a little irregular. In any case, feel free to come find me on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/linearao3) or [Tumblr](http://linearLA.tumblr.com) and demand hints.


	8. The Real Estate Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a window over the front door, and the sun angles through it, illuminating the wall across from him. It’s a narrow hall; could reach out his hand and lay it in the golden warmth, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t like being in Santa Teresa. It’s like swimming in dark water. He could drown here, smothered by the past, dragged down by some helpless, worthless boy called Ben Solo, right under their noses, and none of them would know.
> 
> He feels like he is drowning, sometimes, if he thinks too much.
> 
> So he can’t think. Not about the past. Instead he imagines the future, the life he’s building for himself right now. They’ll never know where to find him, the police or his enemies; they’ll all want him, but all he’ll be is rumor, the white wakagashira of the new organization Oka-san will build. He’ll make everything untraceable, all their powerlines of cash; he’ll tie them up so tightly with the so-called clean money that they’ll never come undone. He knows, better than anybody, how towns like this are run, and he’ll use it against them, make them shake, make them bleed if he has to, and he’ll run this coast himself, Baja to B.C.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content: There is a brief mention of scarcity-based disordered eating habits in the first section.

Rey smiles, to see Poe looking so stunned. It’s as if he’s surprised to find himself up there on the horse’s back, and the horse, though she moves her neck a bit, doesn’t seem displeased; her ears are relaxed, and she shakes her head with a funny horsey noise Rey doesn’t know the English word for, if there even is one.

She remembers the first time she’d seen him. She’d been in despair; Finn had promised when he took the Norton that he’d only be gone an hour, two at most and it had been almost all afternoon. She’d been huddled in the patchy shadow of a bush, wondering which would be worse, to go back to Uther-Platt and tell him the motorcycle had been stolen, or to give up and — but maybe Finn hadn’t abandoned her; maybe he was hurt; maybe he was in trouble. And she’s just been preparing herself to track him when she’d heard the hooves, and hidden herself again. But the horse had stopped right beside her, and she’d looked up to see him. _I just made a friend,_ he’d said in English, with his accent like a movie star’s. _He says if I bring you to fix his motorcycle, the two of you’ll show me the way to town. Says to tell you ‘the Algerian’ sent me._

Seeing her smile, he smiles back, and all the years of their friendship shine in his grin.

“<Right,>” Arturo says briskly. “<So she doesn’t hate you; that’s good. But you can’t ride in the Derby without a saddle, so get yourself down.>”

Poe slips lightly down, as he always does, without seeming to touch the horse. He’s still smiling when he hits the ground, but when he looks at her again, he frowns. “Rey. When did you last eat?”

 _Just now,_ she almost says, which isn’t true. _I don’t need to eat,_ she almost says, which is. She doesn’t need to eat; she could go for another sixteen, seventeen hours before she _needs_ to eat, and even then she won’t really need it, she’ll just want it badly enough to have a little trouble thinking. She’s the desert’s daughter; she can go for days — 

But that’s not what Poe asked. “Around eight last night,” she says.

“Can we put some toast or something in this girl?” Poe asks Han, and Han frowns at Rey like she’s insulted him.

“Sure,” he says, over her protestations, with an irritable jerk of his head. “We’ll get her something right now.”

But he takes his time, walking with them, his thumbs hooked in his pockets and his eyes fixed on the sky.

“Beckett,” he says, half under his breath, and then louder, “the thing about Beckett is, supposing he is out to buy Luke’s place. What the hell’s he going to buy it with? By rights he shouldn’t have a dime. Every deal he’s done since December’s gone south before he could hope to turn a profit. What land he’s got, he can’t sell; if he’s holding out for water rights, it could be years.”

Poe raises an eyebrow. “Do you think the threat’s meant to drive down the price, as well as force the sale?”

“Maybe. Maybe. But he shouldn’t have any ready cash at all. He oughta be _bankrupt.”_ His eyes keep darting to Rey, like she’d know something about this. The third time he does it, she points at her own chest in confusion. _Me? What am I supposed to do?_ Mr. Solo sighs. “That fellow in Barstow, the Japanese. I just wonder what his people’ve got going on in this town, is all.”

A fair question, Rey supposes, though she doesn’t see an obvious connection and she doesn’t like to think that Ren might be involved in some sort of… extortion scheme, or whatever this is. Especially if it involves Paige Tico’s murder. She’d pegged him for a dealer of funny cigarettes, or, more likely, a runner for a gambling outfit. Enough money in it to save up for a gorgeous bike like that Vincent, but not the kind of crime that lets you buy and sell acres and acres of coastal California real estate. 

But if the note appeared in Luke Skywalker’s mailbox overnight, he didn’t have anything to do with it. Not that there’s a comfortable way for her to vouch for that. _He couldn’t have done it; he was in my motel room, eating me like I was dinner and dessert._ She blushes, and hopes no one notices. 

But Mr. Solo’s attention is back on Poe. “And why was Leila having you ask people about Orson Krennick, anyway?”

It’s Poe who blushes now. _That’s us, the Blushing Detectives,_ Rey thinks. Poe grimaces and casts around for a tactful answer.

“I can’t really tell you that, Mr. Solo… Mrs. Solo is my client; there’s privilege there — you know, confidentiality — ”

“She’s my wife.”

“And you’re free to ask her about it, but I can’t tell you without her permission.”

Han looks grim. “I see.” He walks faster.

* * *

Finn walks to the doorway into the barn he’d first come in through, last night, following the sound of the gunshot. He pushes down the memory of panic and pity, and orients himself. “So let’s see. You said you were on the back road, watching. Could you see this door?”

“No,” Rose says, “the trees were in the way.”

“How about the other door? The big one?” He gestures at the horses’ door. She shakes her head. “Okay. Okay. So he could have gone out of either door, but probably I’d have seen him if he came out of this one, even if he’d run straight into the trees. So if he went out that way — if he’d gone to the back road, would you have seen him?”

“Yes. It’s a straight road, and I had my eyes out for the police.”

“And I was watching the front road. Plus he has to have got here somehow in the first place, right? Parked his car somewhere.”

Rose looks around suspiciously, her small hands half-closing into fists. “Unless it was someone who was already here.”

Finn considers. He feels safe ruling out Poe. “That’s Mr. and Mrs. Solo. The guy who looks after the horses. The guy who looks after the library. And a little girl about this tall.” He indicates her height with his hand. “The library guy’s not what you’d call spry; if he’d done it, I think I’d have caught him.” He shuffles through his memory, the man in his undershirt standing horrified in the doorway. “The horse guy would have had to stash the suitcase and the plans and come back around the other side. He could have, but…” He can’t quite bring himself to say, _he looked too horrified, he was too broken up._ So all he says is, “I don’t think so.”

She seems to accept that. “That leaves the master and the mistress.”

“Mr. Solo needs her to jockey for him, doesn’t he? And I don’t see that Mrs. Solo has a motive.”

She steps back, looking away, shifting her face into shadow. “She might have been jealous.”

Finn’s startled. “Was your sister…?”

“No. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t jealous.” Under the veil of the shadow, her look is unreadible. Finn remembers Huxley, in the Resistencia office. _I’m afraid my wife may have said something to her. Something harsh._

“It could be,” he says, keeping his voice soft. “But I heard her talk about her husband. I don’t think she was jealous. And if she had been — it would have been her husband they found dead.”

A trace of a smile brushes Rose’s mouth. He’s surprised how much it lightens his heart to see it. “I think you’re right. I think — I think Paige liked her.”

Finn exhales. “So that brings us back to a stranger. Probably her contact. Probably with a car. And we have the front and back roads ruled out. What does that leave? Do you know who the neighbors are?”

“It’s the highway on one side. That leaves the north side — I don’t know what’s there.”

“He could have pulled over on the highway. Is there a shoulder?”

“I don’t know. It would be a risk, wouldn’t it? Someone might see the car, and think it was abandoned, and call the police.”

“It would be a risk,” he agrees. “People who don’t like risk don’t make midnight deals with suitcases full of cash and stolen blueprints.”

“I suppose not.” She sounds a little sullen, like she resents him describing her sister’s plan like that. “But I don’t think they’d take unnecessary risks, either.”

 _“They?_ You think there might have been more than one?”

Rose looks away. “No. Not last night.”

“So what do you mean, they?”

“Nothing.” Her brows are drawn together. The air in the barn is dusty; he can see the motes floating in the light that falls down around them. If she won’t talk, she won’t talk.

“All right. Well, let’s see what’s to the north. Maybe the neighbors saw something.”

* * *

Mr. Skywalker calls while Mrs. Solo is insisting Rey eat a second piece of toast, this time with jam instead of butter. Poe takes it, and Rey eats awkwardly, both the Solos watching her chew. _It’s only toast,_ she reassures herself. _There’s no special, American way to eat it. It’s okay to use your hands._ The bread is light but the slice is thick, and it tears between her teeth in a way that pleases her, but the silence between the Solos is unsettling. They seem to be looking at each other only from the corners of their eyes, as if they don’t want to be caught at it. Poe’s footsteps on the tiles are a relief.

“The typewriters are the same make, but it could go either way,” he announces. “The letters from Beckett though… I wouldn’t say they’re _aggressive,_ exactly. But he’s pushing hard for a sale. He wants that land. He’s offering $30,000. I don’t know what the state of real estate around here is...”

“It’s a fair opening offer for 400 acres,” Mrs. Solo says, frowning a little. “Maybe more than fair.”

Mr. Solo has been standing with his hands tucked into his armpits, but he bangs the countertop with a fist. “More than fair. He can’t mean it. He’s gotta be connected to that threat.”

Mrs. Solo frowns, and looks at her husband sideways as she offers Rey an apple. She turns her back on Rey’s thanks with a waved hand, and Rey bites the apple, which is mealy but sweet. Poe bites his lip. 

“Well,” he says, “we can test some of these theories, you know. Luke can call him. Say he’s thinking of selling. See if he holds to the price he offered.”

“And if he does?” Mrs. Solo seats herself in a straw-seated kitchen chair, back straight and shoulders back.

“Then he must think there’s an awful lot in it for him,” Han says. “How much can those water rights be worth?”

“You’re the one who decided it was water rights, Hans.”

“We can see how much it’s worth to him,” Poe cuts in. “Luke can offer him the land. And we can offer him a buyer, to see what he wants for it.”

Oh no. Rey freezes with the apple in her mouth. She sees where he’s going with this. _Not again._ “Poe,” she says warningly, through her mouthful of fruit.

“Say, an English heiress.” The bastard is _smiling,_ damn him. As if she hasn’t come within a hairsbreadth of failure every time they’ve done this. “Whimsical, but strong-willed. Used to getting her way.”

“Poe,” she says, “you _know_ I’m no good at this.”

“You’re a pretty young woman with an English accent,” Poe says. “You don’t need to be good at it. So stop scowling and practice your cover story.”

* * *

Ren stands in the hall of the house that used to belong to Orson Krennick and stares into space. Oka-san is talking to people on the phone; he’s been put out in the hall to wait, to remind him that he hasn’t proved himself yet. That his opinion is of no significance, no matter how useful the information he provides might be. He can hear the talking though, and files the information, who he talks to, how he talks to which people. What he asks of them. What he lets them know. It surprises him, how open Oka-san is about his ambitions. _Let the Americans watch their backs. They build themselves bridges to Japan; I’ve crossed them into their own backyard and turned their vices against them. Fāsuto Ōdā is the kind of army no treaty can touch. And there are many ways to occupy. Many paths to supremacy._ He supposes it makes sense; he doesn’t aspire to be a petty criminal, some ordinary thug, and Oka-san wouldn’t want the kind of men who would.

There’s a window over the front door, and the sun angles through it, illuminating the wall across from him. It’s a narrow hall; could reach out his hand and lay it in the golden warmth, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t like being in Santa Teresa. It’s like swimming in dark water. He could drown here, smothered by the past, dragged down by some helpless, worthless boy called Ben Solo, right under their noses, and none of them would know.

He feels like he is drowning, sometimes, if he thinks too much.

So he can’t think. Not about the past. Instead he imagines the future, the life he’s building for himself right now. They’ll never know where to find him, the police or his enemies; they’ll all want him, but all he’ll be is rumor, the white wakagashira of the new organization Oka-san will build. He’ll make everything untraceable, all their powerlines of cash; he’ll tie them up so tightly with the so-called clean money that they’ll never come undone. He knows, better than anybody, how towns like this are run, and he’ll use it against them, make them shake, make them bleed if he has to, and he’ll run this coast himself, Baja to B.C.

The phone rings, and he almost jumps, then makes himself settle. He’ll make himself unshakeable. In the future he’ll be hardened to bullshit; he won’t be easy to bait. Everyone will be too afraid of him to try, anyway. He’ll wear suits from tailors in Tokyo and London whose work his rivals will recognize, with special allowances in the seams for a gun under his arm. He’ll never use the gun, but people will know it’s there. And his wife — a wakagashira should have a wife — his wife will wear beautiful clothes, and pretty shoes with high heels to show off her long legs, and everyone will be as afraid of her as they are of him; they’ll know that if they tried to hurt him, Rey would never let them walk away alive.

It doesn’t have to be Rey, of course; it’s just that she’s in his head, so she’s the one he’s picturing, is all. Even before he’s a wakagashira, when he’s working his way up, proving his worth, he’ll have money; he could find her a place where she won’t have to share her phone, and no one will bother her, and once she understands why he does what he does, she’ll be with him, and he’ll go to her and they’ll keep each other safe — 

“Ren?”

He jolts, but of course it’s Mitaka. “What?”

“Oka-san wants us to go into town for him.”

Something to do. Even if it’s only errands — he’s ready to be patient with menial tasks. (To try to be patient. He can be patient.) As long as there’s something to _do,_ he won’t have to think. 

“Afterwards we’re free for the day,” Mitaka continues. “I’m gonna call Bess. She always wants to go dancing. You want to join us for dinner and drinks?”

Normally, he’d rather drink gasoline than watch Mitaka sit with his pretty girlfriend and rub it in his face how he’s a _normal_ man now, a healthy man with a healthy girl, who doesn’t look at his friends like that anymore, while Ren sits by himself and grinds his teeth — but he’s got Rey’s number. He’s got her taste in his mouth.

“Sure,” he says. “Why the hell not.”

He goes to hear his orders.

* * *

Rancho Esperanza is green and gold in the sun, the long stalks of the native grasses beginning to dry in the spring heat. The northern edge of the property isn’t a short walk, but they don’t have to get all the way there for Finn to see what the situation is: the rolling ground of the ranch breaks off, facing them, in an irregular wall of chalky stone and fine, dusty earth. Too short to be called a cliff, but not an easy scramble. Even if you had a talent for scaling sheer rock faces, you might hesitate to trust your weight to the crumbling sandstone layers.

“There’s no way he could have climbed that with a suitcase and portfolio.” But Rose ignores him and keeps walking. While he’s been keeping his eyes peeled for footprints on the dusty sides of the paths, a discarded weapon, she’s checking behind every bush. He hurries to catch up with her. “You think he might have dumped them?”

Her voice is stiff, like an arm holding everything away from her. “If he killed her for the money, he probably doesn’t even know what the blueprints mean.”

“What do the blueprints mean?”

“If you’re not working for the west, I don’t know why you should care.”

“You said that before. What do you mean, working for the west?”

She stops and turns to him. He stops, too, and then sort of wishes he hadn’t; her frank gaze makes him want to hide, or cover himself, as if he were naked. And maybe he somehow is, because she says, shrewdly, “You’re not really American, are you?”

He sets off again, walking towards the pointless, unclimbable wall of rock. “I wasn’t born here.” The dirt is paler here, layers of fine powder over a hard pack you’d have to fight to get a shovel into. He wonders how much of it is ash, the dust of long-gone fruit trees.

She’s close on his heels. “Where were you born?”

“You haven’t heard of it.”

“A colony?”

He starts scanning the ground again. The man might not have been able to come or go by the north edge of the property, but he might have run this way at first, maybe, to hide or get out of the sight of the house. “A protectorate.”

“What’s it like there?”

“I don’t know. I… haven’t been since… 1932. What’s it matter?” he asks irritably, shifting his shoulders. He thought the clothes he borrowed from Poe fit him fine. He could have been wrong.

“Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you don’t care about the place you were born. About the people who were born where you were born, to people like your parents. About what happens to them. What they suffer.”

Her voice is like a snake wrapping itself around his arm. He’s not _hurt,_ but this can’t happen; it’s a threat; _he cannot let this happen._

“I’m here,” he says. “I’m here now, and I’m making myself a life. I’m a professional. I don’t have a boss. I work for myself.”

“Except when you work for Armand Huxley.”

“He’s my _client._ I didn’t _have_ to take this case.”

“But you did. Why?”

He looks up at the rock, the small dry plants growing here and there in the crevices, the layers of richer, redder earth threading through it. “Maybe I liked your face.”

“You don’t have to care about colonies,” she says. “About the people who have bosses and no choice and no food and no hope. But as it happens I do care. And I need that portfolio.”

There’s no venom in her words, but something painful still courses through his veins.

* * *

Beckett’s office is small; the light from the front window is mostly blocked by the pictures of houses and land tracts he has fastened to the glass. Beckett himself has thin hair, with a few strands still showing faint gold in his sharp widow’s peak, and he sighs as he settles in behind his desk. “So you’ve been impressed by your time in Santa Teresa, Miss… ?”

“Uther-Platt.” She hates using the major’s name, but it matches the accent, anyway. Poe assures her that she _sounds fancy,_ and that double-barreled surnames sound fancy too, but one of these days Rey is going to try this on an American who actually knows English people, and she’s going to be done for. “And yes. Your town here is just… marvelous. Just splendid.” 

_Marvelous. Splendid._ That’s how heiresses talk in movies. She’s never met an heiress, but Leila Solo must have met a few. _Oh no,_ she’d dismissively when Rey protested over her cheap clothes and flimsy shoes, _the frocks aren’t the problem. Well. That skirt is. You see, Rey, spoiled young rich girls, they don’t dress to look put-together. They dress to please themselves._ So Rey is wearing her white sundress again (freshly laundered in the Solos’ machine), even _cheaper_ shoes (green zori from a roadside stand), a hat from Paris like an overturned saucer, and dangling silver earrings with sapphires the size of her thumbnails.

“Well, of course, we’d love to have you as a neighbor. What sort of property were you thinking of? I have a ranch in the hills, with an authentic Spanish house and a view of the sea… ”

“Oh no,” Rey says firmly. “I need a property _on_ the shore.”

Beckett rises, crosses a few steps to a file cabinet, and opens the lower drawer, beginning to thumb through files. “There’s a beachside spot on the southern edge of the Monte Vista neighborhood...”

“Monte Vista would be perfect! I’ve been staying there, you know.” Mrs. Solo had told her about it, the big white hotel where she’s supposedly been lounging in the sun. “Though _not_ one of those dreadful flats they build here, if you please.”

It ought to be fun, pretending to be the kind of person who can turn up her nose at a flat on the beach. If she had a place like that, she could stand on the balcony and look out over the sea at the islands every night. _See that island?_ Ren’s voice says in her ear. _She lived there all alone._

Beckett’s starting to say something, but she interrupts him, making her voice imperious. “I need a substantial property, Mr. Beckett. I don’t mind about the building; I don’t have an urgent need for _shelter,_ and I can always hire an architect. I _am_ concerned with privacy.”

He narrows his eyes. “Privacy?” 

“Yes,” she says firmly. “I prefer my neighbors at a comfortable distance. I don’t require miles and miles of parkland. 300 or 400 acres would do. I would just like… a certain sense of seclusion, I suppose. Perhaps something with trees?”

“Trees,” he says slowly. He looks squarely at her. His eyes are very blue. “You’re looking for a seaside property in Monte Vista… with trees.”

She doesn’t look away. “Will that be a problem? I _am_ prepared to buy outright, if that concerns you. I’m told I can expect to pay on the order of” — she feigns calculation — “$35,000 for the sort of thing I’m looking for.”

His eyes don’t move. “Who told you that?”

Oh hell. Oh shit. Should she just make up a name? What kind of name? Spanish? Anglo? Who should a girl like she’s supposed to be be talking to? She can’t think of _any_ names. “His… his name escapes me.” His eyes are narrowing. She has a flash of inspiration. “The owner of the hotel.”

He gives a slow nod. “Will you wait here, Miss Uther-Platt? I… have to make a call.”

He retreats into the back room. The file cabinet is still open. She slips her feet out of the zori and steps silently around the desk, crouching down to read the tabs. There’s nothing under **O** and for a moment she thinks she’s out of luck, but then she realizes it’s all by surname, and there it is, under **S** , _Skywalker, Olive Tree, Monte Vista, 400 ac._

She slips the file out, paging through. It’s almost empty — a few copies of business letters, the ones he must have been sending to Mr. Skywalker. It’s because it’s so empty that she notices the thickness at the bottom of the file, and fishes out the folded map.

It’s a high-detail surveyor’s map of Monte Vista. A rectangle that must be Olive Tree School has been marked out in red pen, its north end on a little lane called Sevilla, its south end at the shore, and its wavering edge marked by the Salsipuedes River.

Rey frowns. There’s the line of black pen through the river itself; it extends up past the property and to the edge of the 101 — and also down, onto the public property of the beach. The line is heavy, as if drawn over and again for emphasis. _Han mentioned water rights. But surely riparian rights can’t go all the way to the sea? You can’t own the beach in California; how can you have rights over seawater?_

Her problem is the hat. It cuts off her peripheral vision, so she doesn’t see him until a cruel hand closes on her collar, crushing her throat. “All right, Miss _Uther-Platt,”_ Beckett says. “The owner of the Monte Vista Inn’s been in Europe for two years and nobody’s heard your name. So who are you really, and what’re you after?”

* * *

They walk the whole northern edge of Rancho Esperanza, just to be sure. Not an inch of it is climbable, not without two free hands, and there’s no sign of the suitcase or Huxley’s case. Finn is willing to walk the front and back roads, too, but Rose is sure the back road was empty, and he knows he kept a sharp eye on the front. That leaves the highway. They walk along the back road to get there, just because the back road is where they ended up, when they were done searching. 

When he gets tired of the silence, and the pretty view that tells him nothing, he asks, “So how’d you end up working for Huxley?”

He expects her to refuse to answer him, and it’s only idle curiosity anyway. But after a moment of silence, in which he finds himself watching the way the breeze stirs her hair, she says, looking down, “Our parents worked on his father’s tea plantation. They worked from dawn until it was too dark to see, but it wasn’t enough. And when we were too tall to be carried, Mr. Huxley said it impeded his workers to have children in the fields. So they gave my sister a broom and sent her to the stables. And then when I was tall enough to walk they gave me a brush, and I cleaned the house. So I have always worked for his family.”

“They left Indochina during the war?”

Her head snaps up. “Việt Nam. Indochina is what they call their colony. It’s three countries. Cambodia, Laos, and Việt Nam, where I was born.”

“Right,” he says. “Việt Nam.” He likes the way she says it, like she’s planting a flag in the language, drawing a line and daring him to cross it.

_(Give me back my brothers! Forgive her, sir; she’s just a child — )_

“Huxley left when the Japanese came. His wife was French, and the French had a treaty with Japan, but she was dead, and he was British.”

“Dead? But he said — ”

 _“Old_ Mr. Huxley, I mean. Brandon Huxley. Armand is his son.”

Finn remembers that she’d almost said _Armand_ instead of _Huxley_ earlier that morning. “Do you usually call him Armand?”

She looks away. “Sometimes. He’s older than I am, but he… I remember when he was a child. He used to come to the kitchen when his father hit him. He would order the cook to leave, so she wouldn’t see him cry. But he let me stay. And after he got married, he heard me call his wife _une phasme,_ because she’s very tall and thin, and I thought I would be punished, but he only laughed. And now we always call her Phasme when she isn’t there.”

“Why did he marry her, if he thinks she’s a stick insect?” Rose herself has a shape… considerably more appealing than a stick insect’s. But she says _we_ about her and Huxley.

“His father wanted him to. She had money, and connections. Another Frenchwoman.”

She doesn’t sound bothered; she’s explaining the mating habits an alien species, rich whites. As they approach the highway, the ground gets rough; instead of a barbed wire fence, this edge of the property is lined with haphazard piles of stone, and the road they’ve been walking on comes to an abrupt end, the earth around it stripped bare and deeply grooved. By firefighters, maybe, trying to make sure the fire didn’t make it to the highway. Finn jumps down, and then offers her his hand. She stares at him.

“I can hand you down,” he says, and feels his cheeks heat. “If you want. It might be awkward, in your dress.”

Hesitantly, she puts her hand in his. It’s warm, and very small. She steps down, leaning only a little on his hand. He wonders if she just wants to be able to do it herself, or if she doesn’t trust him. He probably could have lifted her down, now that he thinks of it. He looks away, and that’s when he sees it.

The dirt here is too coarse and dry to hold a proper print, but he can still see the disturbance, the little track to a spot where the rocks are low enough to step over. And right beside the rocks, almost hidden in their shadow, the pale butt of a cigarette. Clean. New.

He stoops down. It’s definitely fresh — it has a tiny halo of loose tobacco, which the wind would have blown away. And the paper is sharp and white, and marked with the brand. “Gauloises,” he says, and Rose sucks in her breath.

“I knew it,” she cries bitterly. “The French.”

* * *

The fingers of Beckett’s free hand stroke the sapphire by her ear, even as his other hand twists the fabric at her neck. “Are these real?”

She yanks open the dress’s bow; it buys her just enough slack in the collar to breathe. “Let me go!” she gasps. “What are you doing?” If she can keep up the charade maybe he won’t call the police. Her hat is rolling on the floor.

“They look real,” he continues, as if she hadn’t said anything. “I’m just curious to know where you got them.”

“A gift. From my mother. Get your hands off me!” If she hurts him he’ll call the cops for sure. But he doesn’t know her real name and her car is parked out of sight and nobody in this town knows her. She shifts her right foot slowly, preparing to throw her whole weight up and back against him. If he clutches at the jewel he’ll rip it out of her ear. She has to be fast.

His foot in its heavy shoe comes down over her bare one. “Ah-ah-ah, girlie. None of that.” He bends down close to her, so that she can feel his breath, and starts to press down on her foot. “What do I got to do to you to make you behave and give me some answers?”

Her knife. If she can get the knife off her garter — but she hasn’t got her knife; Ren took it and he dropped it on the floor and she forgot to look for it — 

The door opens, and Beckett tries to push her all the way to the floor, hide her from whoever’s coming in, but the file cabinet isn’t that big and she’s not that small; he shoves harder and she grunts and a familiar voice says, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Ren!” she cries. “Ren, it’s me; it’s Rey — ” and then there’s a clatter of heavy steps and a quiet snap and she looks up, no longer held down in her crouch by the real estate man, just in time to see Beckett hit the wall, and Ren, with a terrifying snarl beneath the blank inhumanity of his helmet and glasses, advancing on him with her switchblade out.

“Wait,” Beckett stammers, “wait, wait, wait — who are you people; who sent you?”

Ren stops, the blade inches from Beckett’s neck. “I’m Ren. Fāsuto Ōdā. Oka-san sent me.” 

Beckett’s eyes widen. “Oka — she’s with you? It was a test? I wasn’t going to sell it to her; you can ask her — go on, ask her! I didn’t know or I wouldn’t have touched her, I swear; I didn’t think you guys worked with dames — ”

Ren’s hand digs into the pocket of his motorcycle jacket and produces a thick roll of bills, holding it up in Beckett’s line of sight. “I was told to apologize. The courier has been delayed. This is the first installment of the downpayment. $400.” The money hits the floor. “I’m not feeling very _apologetic_ right now. Rey, are you all right?”

Rey gets to her feet. She flexes the foot the real estate man had stepped on; it’s a little sore, but nothing worse. “Yes,” she says, and retrieves the hat, which is probably worth several month’s pay.

“I wasn’t going to sell,” Beckett insists. “Tell him!”

Rey considers. He’s not on her list of bosom pals right now, but Ren, mirror-eyed and snarling, must be terrifying to him. And she’s pretty sure she’s learned more in the last forty-five seconds than she has all morning. “No,” she says at last. “No, he certainly didn’t seem like he was going to sell me anything.”

Beckett sighs, but Ren doesn’t move an inch. “Apologize.”

She sees the lump in the real estate man’s throat bob. “I’m sorry.”

“Do you know how you’d have to apologize if you were part of my organization?” Ren reaches out and sets the sharp edge of the blade against Beckett’s little finger.

“I’m sorry!” Beckett cries again. “I’m very, very sorry!”

“But you’re not Fāsuto Ōdā. You’re lucky we let you serve us. Can you think of anything more dishonorable than hurting a woman?” Ren takes the blade away. There’s a thin line of red on Beckett’s finger. “The rest of the downpayment is coming. You will wait for it. And I will not apologize.”

Rey comes around the desk and slips her feet back into the zori. Beckett slumps back into his chair. “I understand,” he gasps.

“Good,” says Ren. “Let’s go, Rey.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Funny cigarettes** — Either joints, or cigarettes made with a combination of tobacco and marijuana  
>  **Wakagashira** — A high-ranking yakuza lieutenant, a second-in-command  
>  **Fāsuto Ōdā** — This is just what the First Order is called in Japan, and doesn't actually seem to mean anything!  
>  **Zori** — In other parts of the US, people call this type of sandal a flipflop, a thong, or a beach sandal. In California we use a Japanese word for a similar type of shoe. I do not understand why JJ Abrams, a son of SoCal, named a character after a sandal.
> 
>  
> 
> The median home price in 1954 was around $8,500, just to orient you around the prices here.
> 
> According the (again, singular) book I read on the subject of the yakuza, their rise after WWII and their ability to openly assert political power was entwined with Japanese resentment of the American occupation, and in particular of the American occupation's insistence on equal rights for ethnic minorities in Japan. The yakuza were valorized, and valorized themselves, as bold outsiders willing to stand up for Japan.
> 
> No one can own the beach in California; everything below the median high-tide line is public property. This is one of my favorite things about my home state. Rich people hate it.
> 
> Many thanks to [Bombastique](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bombastique/pseuds/Bombastique) for helping me untangle the threads of my plot into something hopefully readable. Without her I would still be too frozen in terror to publish.


	9. The Sundowner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As they step onto the little patch of clear space that passes for a dance floor, the song changes. Something faster and bluesier, without words. Donny and Bess pick up their pace, and Ren’s hand closes around hers. He pushes her out into a spin, and her dress may not be as pretty, but she’s fast; she can move. She puts a twist into her shoulders and her hips, and when he pulls her back to whirl her around, she feels like she’s earned the close, hungry way he looks at her, the tension in his hands on her. The next time he spins her, he doesn’t push her out; he pulls her hand up and guides her into a twirl in place, his other paw dragging heavily around her waist, tracing her shape as she turns, like a needle on a record. Then he pulls her close against him and they revolve together, stepping in and out of the brackets their feet make around one another’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A content warning for assorted horrors of the 20th century, including the Holocaust, British colonialism, French colonialism, and Japanese colonialism, with some complicated and ugly survivor feelings. Also, use of Spanish casta racial terms, and the treatment of black hair as a "problem."
> 
> There's a lot of music in this chapter; you may want to know what the songs sound like as you encounter them in the narrative, so I'm putting them up here. (Also, though I was thinking of doing this anyway, the AO3 end-note character limit forced my hand.)
> 
> [Peggy Lee — I've Got You Under My Skin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1YFEIhZuaY) ([Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/track/6AbkMTSsnBtu1CF8x6nCVb))  
> [Johnny Ace — Burley Cutie (inst.)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNxKlzJ8PsA) ([Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/track/1bOR4plDsr2V6cSgfsLT1H))  
> [Johnny Ace & Big Mama Thornton — Yes, Baby](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAhdM-grwRA) ([Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/track/0NRXrKQjtqwHYSSM7zW1wy))  
> [Johnny Ace — Never Let Me Go](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhD3krWapG8) ([Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/track/48X5wr3newrda05rtr5DQ5))  
> and returning Rey fav:  
> [Louis Jordan — Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LGl70VGvmg) ([Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/track/0IzMBujKJ24egd9HIK3OhG))
> 
> In California in 1954, we're too late for true swing dancing and too far west for true rockabilly; dancing looked something like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYdo_J3Puns) or [this.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjnXw9CO9c8)
> 
> Many thanks to [Bombastique](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bombastique/pseuds/Bombastique) ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/Bombastique1)) for reading a partial version of this chapter and giving me good advice, which I have hopefully followed.

On the sidewalk outside, hot wind fans her hair and strokes her bare legs. Rey inhales deeply. The air feels strange, and she braces instinctively for a lashing of dust and sand, but it doesn’t come. 

Ren holds out his hand to her. Her switchblade shines in the palm of his glove and she snatches it up—another instinct. But she's made of more than instinct, or so she hopes. She snatches again, this time at his hand. She only catches his thumb but when she draws it to her he closes his whole hand around hers. It's nice hand, big and square like a paw; it reminds her of the fairy tale about the friendly bear who asks to be let in.“Thank you,” she says. “You really saved my life back there.” She’s exaggerating a little, but maybe not much.

“It’s nothing. You’d have done the same.”

She imagines coming into an office, finding a man pushing a woman down. Maybe not _exactly_ the same thing, but — “Yes.”

“Do you need a ride?” He gestures at his motorcycle with the thumb she’s holding and she lets go, embarrassed. 

“No,” she says. “My car is parked around the corner.”

“Right.” It’s harder to read his face under the shades, but she thinks he looks disappointed. He puts his leg over the bike and lifts his foot to start it. 

“Early in the year for the Santa Ana,” she blurts.

He takes his foot off the pedal. “It’s not the Santa Ana. It’s a sundowner wind.”

Rey looks up at the sky, which is a clear, uniform blue. “It’s hours to sundown, isn’t it?”

“It’s a corruption,” Ren says. “Linguistically.” The precision of the word on his tongue surprises her a little. But he learned Japanese. “From the Arabic _sumoom.”_

“This isn’t a sumoom. It’s much too cool.” The sumoom was the poison wind, the lethal mix of heat and sand that broke the British thermometers and flayed bare skin. Anyone caught out in the desert during a sumoom would die. It can’t be more than 85 here.

His head tilts and he slides the glasses down his long nose. “You’ve been in one?”

“Not really. I mean, not out in one. It’s… a long story.” She shifts her feet. “Why is there so much Arabic in this town, anyway? Sumoom, and the Solos’ place is called Al Daran, and Mrs. Solo’s named Leila… ”

He pushes the glasses back up. “Mostly just the Spanish. The Moors invade Spain, the Spanish invade California, the Americans invade Mexico, and the now the California Spanish say _ojalá_ for _inshallah_ and the Anglos call a hot wind the sundowner. Are you free later? Or do you have to go back to L.A.?”

She considers the abrupt question. She doesn’t think she’ll be going back to LA anytime soon, not until they’ve figured what’s the business with Skywalker’s school and who killed Paige Tico. After what she’s learned just now… Ren is in this. On the real estate side, anyway. She should be running for the hills.

But she can’t help but feel like he can’t know what he’s gotten into. She’s spent ten years of her life with desperate men and evil men and uncaring men, and he doesn’t _feel_ like any of those. He wants someone to trust him. He cares about being honorable. _He kissed me like he was drowning and I was air._ Not that that matters. But he needs to know that this is a darker business than he thinks.

And if nothing else, maybe she can learn more from him. “I don’t… know quite when I’ll be free. But if there’s somewhere you’ll be staying, where I could meet you… ”

“If you want to come back to Maisie’s, maybe sometime between seven and ten? I’ll be having dinner and drinks with my friend and his girl. I’ll make sure the jukebox is good. We could dance.”

He’s looking at his foot, poised on the starter. She’s as good as offered to come to his room, and he wants to go dancing. She has to get him out of this mess. “I’d love that.”

* * *

Poe’s legs ache. “<Keep standing!>” Arturo barks at him. He’s lost count of the laps he’s made of the ring, standing in Blue Hammer’s stirrups.

“Nobody races like this!” he yells.

“<You might have to! Show me your whip!>” Poe grabs for it. “<Not fast enough! Do it again, faster!>”

“<I thought you didn’t _want_ me to whip her!>”

Arturo whistles a falling note, and the horse obediently slows. Arturo walks out to them. Poe keeps standing, just to show him he can.

“<You can sit. Now listen to me.>” Arturo tilts his head back to meet Poe’s eyes, holding his hat on with his hand. “<You’ve got high color; you can pass for a gringo. And going into that track, you have to. So maybe they’ll play fairer to you than they did to that poor girl, may she rest in peace.>” Poe belatedly copies the cross he makes on his chest. “<But this is the biggest race in the west. And some people will have it in for Solo’s horse no matter what jockey he sends. The track will be ruthless. I don’t like my horses whipped. But she knows what it means. Show it to her before you let her feel it; touch her with it before you strike her. But if anyone tries anything funny on the two of you? Don’t let him see you coming. You understand?>”

Poe nods. Arturo walks backwards to the center of the ring. “<Good. Now stand.>”

The pain in his legs moves from an ache to a burn, but he doesn’t let himself think about. Instead he thinks about Paige Tico, dead on the floor of a barn. About how she’d been awake, late at night when Hans and Leila were fighting, when most jockeys with a big race coming would have been dead asleep. About her and himself and Ben Solo and Leila Orreaga and all the people who have walked the halls of that house at night when they should have been asleep.

Like a good rider, like Arturo’s always taught him, he keeps his eyes where Blue Hammer needs to go, and so he almost misses Finn and the girl. They’re coming from the back corner of the property, on the highway side, and they’re headed straight for him. He doesn’t even pull the reins, just changes the pressure of his knees, and Blue Hammer, good girl, slows and goes where he wants her to, before Arturo can even protest.

“What goes on?” he asks over the gate.

Finn’s mouth is wary, and his voice is low. “This is Rose. Rose Thai Cô. Paige’s sister.” Poe stares at the girl, her rumpled, curling hair and her wrinkled dress, and then casts his eyes down.

“I’m sorry about your sister, Miss Thai Cô.”

Rose nods stiffly. “Thank you.”

“We found… some things. Some clues. And Rose isn’t quite ready to go back to Huxley. Do you think the Solos will rat her out to him? Or can we ask them if she can stay here? Walk around the property a bit?”

“No, they won’t tell him if she asks them not to.”

“Tell them that she came to see where her sister died. Tell them she left without the Huxley’s permission.”

“They’ll understand.”

“Thanks. We need to look around some more, I think, and I don’t want her getting in trouble for trespassing.”

“Sure thing. What did you find?”

“Fresh fag end. Uh, cigarette butt. A track. Maybe we can find more.”

Poe nods. Finn’s said he wouldn’t work this case, but he knew from the moment he saw him, frightened and furious, with his white coat pressed over the dead woman’s wound, that nothing could stop him from following this trail. Technically it might be malpractice on Finn’s end not to report Rose to his client, but he’s sure he has his reasons.

“Rey should be back soon. I’ll go back to the house when I see her car, and I’ll let them know then.”

“Thanks, partner,” Finn says, and turns away. Rose doesn’t turn as quickly. She’s looking at Poe, and at the horse. 

“That’s Blue Hammer, isn’t it?” She puts out a hesitant hand and he gives Blue Hammer a free head; she dips an inquiring nose towards Rose, snuffling at her. Rose strokes her nose, and she whickers. 

“Yes. I know I can’t ride her like your sister could — ”

“You’ll be kind to her, though? Won’t you? You won’t hurt her?”

“Never,” Poe says. “On my honor.” 

“Thank you.” Rose gives a small, damp-eyed smile, to Blue Hammer and to him. She’s pretty. Finn has pivoted back. He’s waiting for her.

* * *

Rey sighs with relief as she puts the sapphire earrings and the fancy hat (only a little dirty) back into Mrs. Solo’s hands. She’s the only one expressing anything like relief, though; Hans Solo looks like a ghost, his wife looks stern as a statue, and Poe has a worried frown.

“So Mr. Beckett’s in bed with Japanese mobsters, and they want Olive Tree School,” Mrs. Solo says. “Badly enough to threaten arson. Possibly badly enough to come here and shoot a horse, and be willing to shoot a girl.”

 _“If_ that’s what happened to Paige.”

“Poe? Do you know something?”

“Not for sure. But she was… acting oddly that night. I’d like to talk to her sister.”

“I think Beckett might have his own interest in Olive Tree somehow,” Rey puts in. “He had a map of it that was marked up, with a black line along the river. I thought it was the water rights, like Han said, but it went all the way out to the sea.”

Han exhales. Mrs. Solo’s cool face is unmoved. “The oil line. It belongs to Mr. Huxley; he pays my brother an easement fee to run a pipeline from the offshore platforms along the river bed. It’s a reliable source of income; the platforms are expected to produce well into the 21st Century.”

Poe whistles. “So you think he might be bargaining with the mobsters? He gets the rights to the easement?”

“It’s possible. Certainly he seems to have some kind of bargain with them. I might find out more tonight.”

“You’re going out to talk to them?”

 _Talk._ “I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Watch yourself,” Mr. Solo says. “Sundowner’s coming off the mountains. Makes people crazy.”

Everybody says that about hot wind. If it won’t smother her with heat and Naqab sand, Rey reckons she can handle it. “I can take care of myself,” she says, in what she hopes is a reassuring tone.

“I knew a girl who could take care of herself. Then she stepped out with a mobster. These things don’t always go the way you think.”

“I know it’s an ugly business, Han — ” Leila begins.

Her husband gets up abruptly. “But we’ve never been afraid of a little ugly business in this family, have we?” His voice is desolate. He swipes at his face with his sleeve. “I’m going for a walk.”

He’s out the door before any of them can say anything.

“Leila,” Poe says, “he was asking me about my inquiries about Orson Krennick. I told him I couldn’t tell him anything without your permission.”

“I told him last night that Krennick was the one Ben fought with in the bar. That upset him enough. No need to give details, I think. And besides, it seems you’ve been converted from a P.I. to a jockey. Knowing Han, horses will eclipse everything.”

Poe nods, but he doesn’t look convinced.

* * *

Ren shaves his face with a straight razor. He does not think too hard about that, about why a straight razor had been the first purchase he’d made to start a new life, because he doesn’t care to think too hard about who first gave him a straight razor and who took it away from him. Instead he thinks about why he is shaving, which is that he has a goddamn double-date. Him. With Rey.

She clearly doesn't know what she's gotten into. She told him herself, she hates the cheats and the bastards. So it's just that she doesn't know. And why would she? Covering it all up is part of their game.

He’s glad she’s coming, not just because he wants to see her, but because it’ll save him the trouble of trying to explain her to Mitaka. He’d met her, sure, but he hadn’t been paying attention. Ren has been trying words out all day, holding them up to his image of Rey like garments on hangars, but none of them fit. _Ran my bike to the limit with a knife on her garter._ Mitaka won’t understand. _Hottest dolly in California, pins like a pin-up, pussy like tamarind candy._ True, but catch him saying any of it. _Shines like a gilded veladora, lit from within._ Donny’s never been to Mass. Maybe he should try Japanese. _< Beautiful like a sword is beautiful.>_

But she’s going to come dancing. He should practice. It’s been a while. He’s grateful that he’s lead as much as he’s followed, maybe more.

He washes the razor and rinses his face without looking in the mirror, so he doesn’t see anything Rey might not like.

* * *

Finn and Rose find the car tracks in gravel of the highway shoulder. They don’t tell them much, but Finn measures the distance between the tires and rules out some makes and models. Back on the estate itself, they’re contemplating a patch where the grass seems especially broken when Finn looks up to see the little girl, Bibiana, looking at them.

“<What are you doing?>”

“<We’re looking for — >” He can’t quite remember the Spanish word. “<Signs. To see if someone came this way last night.>”

“<The tall man?>”

Finn’s head jerks. Rose frowns. “What did she say?”

“Just a minute. <Bibiana, did you see someone last night?>”

She tosses her head. “I _said,_ are you looking for the tall man? I speak English, you know. I’m in _second grade._ I tried to tell Tío Hans but he was just saying a bunch of bad words and crying, and then Tío Arturo told me I was bothering the policemen and he made me go to bed without even asking what I was talking about.”

Finn curses in French, which is usually safe, but of course Rose jumps. He shoots her an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. I just — when did you see him? What did he look like?”

Bibiana pouts, and squints at the sky. “I woke up when it was noisy. And I looked out of my window in case it was a fire. I don’t know what time it was… ” She looks sideways at him, uncertainly.

“That’s okay,” he says encouragingly. Rose plucks at his sleeve and he closes his hand over hers. “And what did he look like? Was he white?”

“I don’t know. Maybe criollo or castizo, maybe mestizo; I don’t know.” She looks at Rose and shrugs, “Could have been chino; I didn’t see his face. He was tall, and he had a long dark coat and a big dark hat.”

“Tall like me? Or tall like Sr. Solo?”

She considers. “More like Tío Hans, I think. And he had a lot of luggage; he had a big normal suitcase and a big flat suitcase and a big sack.”

“A sack?” he asks urgently. “What kind of sack?”

“A sack like we get oats in, only not _exactly_ like that.”

“Thank you, Bibiana. I owe you.”

She holds out her hand to shake, and Finn does. Rose bends down to Bibiana’s level. She doesn’t have to bend too far. “Gracias. Muchas gracias.”

“De nada,” Bibiana says, magnanimously.

She walks his whole path for them, running eagerly from point to point. He circled the barn, and then took cover in the little stand of trees for a minute before he set out for the highway. Bibiana requests, as payment, an orange from the top of a tree too young to be safely climbed, and Finn procures it for her. She’s peeling it neatly when Mrs. Solo approaches them. Or, more specifically, approaches Rose.

“<Pardon me. My French — it’s very bad. Do you speak English?>”

“Yes, ma’am.” Rose folds her hands and bows her head.

“I wanted to tell you — I’m so very sorry about what happened to your sister in our house. Because she — left us under such terrible circumstances, I’m afraid that it may be some days before the police allow it, but when it is possible, I want you to know that Mr. Solo and I would be honored if you would let us take responsibility for the expenses of her funeral. Do you have any other kin in this country?”

Rose shakes her head rapidly, not looking up. Her fingers knot and unknot and knot again. “No, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am. I’m very — very grateful.” She doesn’t look grateful so much as miserable. But who can blame her?

The thin old man from the library is crossing the lawn to them. He makes slow progress, but Finn can see that he’s holding a white rose out in front of him. His breath a little taxed, he offers it to Rose.

“<Forgive me, Mademoiselle,>” he says, in very old-fashioned, very correct French, “<it is my understanding, from my studies, that it is customary in the East to mourn in white, rather than black. I regret that I could not procure a chrysanthemum.>” He holds out the pale bloom with a courtly, European bow. “<Please accept my condolences on the loss of your beautiful sister.>”

Rose takes the rose. As he watches, her fingers begin to tremble. The shaking takes possession of her body, and tears run down her face.

“Please,” Mrs. Solo says, “won’t you come inside?”

Rose turns for a moment, towards the barn, and none of them can see her face, but Finn can hear the sob that wracks her body. Then, still weeping, she turns back to Mrs. Solo, and nods.

* * *

When Rey walks into Maisie’s, it’s just past seven, and Ren is feeding quarters to the jukebox with sharp little flicks of his fingers. His forehead is knotted with concentration as he stabs out the codes for his songs; she gets close enough to smell leather and grease before he turns and his face clears. She thinks for a minute he’ll put his arm around her, or even kiss her, but he just ducks his head and points the way to the table.

He’s sitting with the Japanese boy from Barstow, the other biker, and a pretty Japanese girl with a small mouth and penciled eyebrows. “This is Donny Mitaka,” Ren says, “and Bess Ine. This is Reina Jaffa.”

“Hello,” Rey says. “It’s nice to meet you.” Neither of them would seem to agree with her; Donny looks at her warily, and Bess looks bored and disgusted. It might be Rey’s dress; she put her kitten heels and her stockings back on, but with her cardigan around her shoulders, she probably looks more like an overgrown high school student than a woman. Especially next to Bess’s black rayon cocktail dress and perfect lipstick.

They eat the bar’s food, simple grill stuff that Maisie drops at their table herself. She nods to Rey and gives Ren a pointed look Rey can’t decipher. It’s all finger food, and Rey is careful to order exactly as little as Bess. Ren’s packed the jukebox with jazz and jump blues. Rey remembers the time Finn was pretending to be an American and got caught out, unable to name a single hit. Now he leans close to the radio, learning every tune. He doesn’t like being caught out. Rey tries to eat it slowly, pretending it’s one of those times she’ll be sick if she doesn’t pace herself. But she must be eating the onion rings wrong somehow; Bess wrinkles her nose and turns to Donny.

“I wanna dance.”

He bites his lip. “Dancehall’s closed. I’m sorry, baby.”

Damn. Rey was hoping they’d go off, and she could talk to Ren. 

“Then let’s dance here,” Bess coaxes her steady, stroking his arm. Peggy Lee is singing, upbeat: 

_I’ve got you under my skin_  
_I’ve got you deep in the heart of me._

“Dance _here?”_ Donny says, and he looks appalled, but when Bess nudges him with her hip, he goes with her to the little cleared space by the bar. Their feet move lightly to the music and the black rayon swirls, mesmerizing.

But this is her chance. “Ren,” she says softly, twisting in the booth to face him. He looks down at her; their knees are pressed together. Her nose has gotten used to the smell of grease on his jacket, and she inhales the hot brown cumin, the precious saffron smell of his skin. “Ren, what do you know about these people?”

“Which people?” he says. Big as a horse and stubborn as a mule.

_I tried so not to give in_  
_I said to myself, this affair never could go so well_

“Maybe you just think you’re buying property from a crooked real estate dealer, but it’s worse than that. There’s extortion in it, Ren.” He turns his dark eyes away from her, watching the couple dancing on the floor. Well. Who wouldn’t look. The black dress is elegant. And it rises when Bess spins. 

“Do you know what went on at the Santa Anita Racetrack during the war?”

_But why should I try to resist when darling, I know so well_  
_I’ve got you under my skin_

Maybe that’s a non-sequitur, or maybe it’s some kind of coded message about Hans Solo. She’ll ask later. “No. But I know a jockey from that track was shot dead in the Solos’ barn last night, and there looks to be a connection.”

That startled him. He’s looking at her again. “What connection?”

“Someone sent a threatening letter to Mrs. Solo’s brother that night. You gave Beckett money, but the property isn’t even his to sell yet; he’s trying to scare Mr. Skywalker into selling. He and Mr. Solo think someone went into the barn to hurt one of Mr. Solo’s horses, and killed Paige when she caught them at it.”

“The jockey was a woman?”

She _knew_ he wouldn’t want to be involved with this if he knew how bad it was. “I met her, Ren; she slept in my car. What kind of people kill innocent young women?”

“Maybe the kind who attack them in offices,” he says slowly.

Her collar feels tight at the memory, and she remembers the hard sole of Beckett’s shoe coming down deliberately on her bare foot. “Maybe. But still. Is that the kind of person you want to be involved with? Even as a buyer?”

_Use your mentality_  
_Wake up to reality_

She watches a moment of uncertainty flicker over his face. “I’ll… talk to Oka-san about it.” Not the answer she wanted, but she’s on her way. She sighs.

_But each time I do_  
_Just the thought of you_  
_Makes me stop before I begin_

He toys with the salt shaker on the table, his knee warm against hers. “Do you want to dance? Or I can buy you a drink.”

_’Cause I’ve got you_  
_Under my skin._

One of his thick fingers is stroking a ridge of the salt shaker in time with the beat. She takes off her cardigan. “I like dancing.”

As they step onto the little patch of clear space that passes for a dance floor, the song changes. Something faster and bluesier, without words. Donny and Bess pick up their pace, and Ren’s hand closes around hers. He pushes her out into a spin, and her dress may not be as pretty, but she’s fast; she can move. She puts a twist into her shoulders and her hips, and when he pulls her back to whirl her around, she feels like she’s earned the close, hungry way he looks at her, the tension in his hands on her. The next time he spins her, he doesn’t push her out; he pulls her hand up and guides her into a twirl in place, his other paw dragging heavily around her waist, tracing her shape as she turns, like a needle on a record. Then he pulls her close against him and they revolve together, stepping in and out of the brackets their feet make around one another’s.

Maybe Bess doesn’t like dancing so much after all, or maybe she doesn’t like sharing the small space with Ren and the urgent way he moves, as if every step were the execution of an order he’d just been radio’d — they’re alone on the floor when the next song comes up.

_My baby loves me in the morning_  
_Loves me all night too_  
_Well, she loves me in the morning_  
_And it’s all night too_

Their steps circle and dodge. She slips in and out of the circle of his arm.

_She says, ‘I really love you baby;_  
_’I don’t care what you do!’_

His eyes make her feel breathless and pursued, like he’s chasing her instead of dancing with her. Like a hot wind is brewing at her back.

_So, yes, tell me, baby,_  
_What’s wrong with you?_

Well, what if it is? It won’t kill her. She knows how to take care of herself. She keeps her eyes on him. _You may have hands like a fairytale bear, eyes like a fairytale wolf. But your mouth is a man’s mouth, and hunting dogs like me have brought down bigger game._ She smiles, and lets him see her teeth.

Rey thinks, when the song ends, that he’ll ask her back to his room. Instead, he keeps a steady rock-step in the absence of music and asks her quietly, “Where were you, during the war?”

“My parents sent me away.” That’s usually all she has to say. People assume the rest: the Blitz, the evacuations. Close enough. 

“Away from where?”

She smiles a little. The jukebox is dropping the next song. She gets ready to say _the war, the bombs_ and spin her way out of the conversation. But the next song isn’t like that. The piano notes drop sweet as honey, and Johnny Ace’s voice is slow and melancholy. 

_Just let me love you tonight_  
_Forget about tomorrow_  
_My darling, won’t you hold me tight_  
_And never let me go_

Her smile tastes like poison as she swallows it down. “Warszawa. Warsaw.” She makes to return to the table, even though the other couple is still sitting there, casting unhappy and irritated looks at them by turns. But his hand slides from her waist to the small of her back, drawing her close. She can’t see his eyes anymore, but the steps he leads her through are gentle. His voice is gentle, too. 

“That name you gave. On the phone. Malta.”

“Malka.”

“That was the name your parents gave you.”

_Dry your eyes_  
_No tears, no sorrow_  
_Cling to me with all your might_  
_And never let me go._

“Yes.” She’s been looking out, her head turned towards his arm. She turns it so all she sees is his pale neck, the soft line of his long jaw. “Malka means _queen._ Like Reina.” 

“In Polish?”

“In Hebrew.” It’s not the end of the world, to tell him this. It doesn’t hurt. They’re just words. Nothing to cry about.

“Where did you go, during the war?”

“Mandatory Palestine.” It’s Israel, now. _Let the Zionists dream,_ the major had said, and they had.

“Jaffa.”

“Yes.”

“That’s why you don’t know.” He doesn’t explain what it is she doesn’t know. His hand, on the small of her back, flattens, and conforms itself exactly to the curve of her spine. 

People have sailed the world for the things he smells of. People have killed for them. Why does she feel so safe, with his warm hands on her?

_Give me the right_  
_In summer or in springtime_  
_To tell the world that you are mine_  
_And never let me go._

“This is the last song I picked out on the jukebox, doll,” he says, low.

“We don’t have to stop,” she whispers back. “I have a portable player in my trunk. Some old records. I’m staying in the same room across the parking lot.”

Ren inhales deeply, and his hand on her back slides a little lower.

* * *

Finn left Rose sitting crosslegged on the floor of the room where her sister slept. Part of him wanted to stay with her but she seemed to want to be alone. He calls the answering service; there’re no messages. What had he been hoping for, that Huxley would call and say _forget it all; I’ll send you two days pay in the mail and Rose can do whatever she wants?_ As he wanders the house, he catches his own reflection in a dusk-darkened window and curses. He’s been careless, the last 30-odd hours, and between fog and sweat and sea air, his hair is kinking up.

He tracks down Arturo. “<Is there a pharmacy around here that sells Madam Walker? Johnson Ultra Wave?>”

“<Sells what?>”

Finn sighs. “<Lye, then,>” he says, and repeats it in English, so he knows he doesn’t mean bleach. “<Do you have lye? And potato starch.>”

“<Lye, yes. Potato starch, no.>” Finn winces. Raw lye sounds like torture. “<Why?>”

“<My hair.>”

Arturo tilts his head back and squints critically at Finn’s hair. “<No potato starch. But I do have horse clippers.>”

Finn sighs. There’s no good option here. But he’s exhausted, and he can’t bear the thought of spending another sleepless night, kept awake by a burning scalp. He lets Arturo lead him to the barn and sit him on an overturned bucket, and tries to sit patiently as the clippers buzz around his ears. It’s good of Arturo to help him out, and he tries to feel appreciative. It gets very easy to feel grateful when the old guy dusts him off, leads him back to the dark kitchen, and pours them both healthy glasses of tequila.

“<Paige Tico,>” he says. “<May she rest in peace.>”

Finn drinks to that, and thinks _and may her killer get what he deserves,_ and drinks to that too.

Arturo goes to bed, but he leaves the bottle, and Finn’s on his second glass when Rose comes in, squinting in the soft light the moon throws through the windows.

“You cut your hair.”

“I look like a _soldier.”_ When she stares at him he realizes how much contempt he put into the word. Loathing, even. He leans his forearms against the counter and bends over, as if he might retch. But he won’t. He had enough dinner that two glasses of tequila won’t lay him out.

Dinner. She hasn’t eaten. He’s straightening up to offer to get her something when she says, “I’m a soldier, you know.”

“In what army?”

She doesn’t answer. He goes to the fridge, pulls out the chili leftovers, and puts them down in front of her with a spoon before pouring a little more tequila. Since the last time he slept, he’s driven 200 miles, knelt in blood, been cuffed, and almost been knifed. He needs a drink. He leans into the pour a bit.

She eats quickly, with hunger and without relish. The way a soldier eats. The way he eats, most days. He makes himself sip the tequila, take it slow, really taste it.

“Why don’t you want to be a soldier?”

“Soldiers kill, and they die, and they do it on other people’s orders. If I’m going to do that, I want to do it on my own terms. I want to choose.”

“Nobody dies on their own terms,” she says, matter-of-fact. “Unless you’re talking about suicide. And even then you come back as a ghost. Maybe.” She falters, and then lifts her chin. “You can choose what you fight for. But you ought to fight for something.”

He looks at her steady, challenging face, and then away. “You’re brave.”

“I have to be, if I want to win.”

“Rose. Bad things happen to brave girls.” He tilts the glass just a little, so the tequila goes down his throat in a thin, burning stream. Lets it burn out anything he might remember.

 _“Like what?”_ Her spoon clatters in the bowl as she throws it down. “Tell me one thing.”

He looks at her levelly. “They get shot.”

Her soft mouth goes hard. “My sister is a hero. If I have to — ”

“They get other people shot.” This conversation is a car, and he is careening towards a roadblock. He built that barrier himself, for his own safety, but he is drunk, and he can’t take his foot off the gas. He feels his vowels slide, his Los Angeles accent slipping east and east and east. “You go and you do the brave thing, you fight for what you want, and _everyone suffers for it._ Everyone dies.”

“You think someone’s going to come and shoot us?”

He throws up his hands. “Not here; I didn’t mean here!”

“Then where?”

He gropes for some way to stop, change course, but his head is hot with liquor and her eyes glow like coals in the darkness. _This is why alcohol is haram,_ he thinks, his throat closing with something like panic; _it’s dangerous, makes you —_ “Where I’m from. Where I was _born._ When they took us, they took us all together, from the mallam’s compound, and they took us to their school, and our fathers came, and they asked the British; they were polite; they were just _asking_ and the British would just have sent them away, but some of the boys had a sister, and she pushed to the front and she shouted at the soldiers — and she frightened the horses — ”

_(Give me back my brothers! Forgive her sir she is only a child — ) ___

“ — and they _shot. All of them.”_ He flings the glass at his own feet; it shatters on the dark tile, and he is distantly, vaguely aware that he regrets it. Distantly, vaguely aware that Rose is moving away from him. Probably because he’s covered the floor in broken glass and alcohol. He closes his eyes and breathes. “I’m sorry, Rose.”

There’s a soft sound, right beside him. He opens his eyes — she’s found a broom, and she’s carefully sweeping up the glass. “How old were you?”

“Seven. I was my mother’s only child,” he says, though that isn’t what she asked.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“They took me to be a soldier. To make us officers.” He could have changed his name, when Rey changed hers. But he kept _Askari._ The teachers said, _it’s an honor to be a soldier of the British Empire, the dread and envy of them all._ He could say it in English, in Arabic, in French, in Latin. _The dread and envy of them all. You were chosen to be askari because you were the best._

The broken glass tinkles faintly as Rose tips it into the dustbin. She opens cupboards, silent, until she finds more glasses, and then she takes one to sink and fills it with water. She puts it in his hands. It has a harsh, mineral taste.

“There was a rebellion in the south of Việt Nam, before the Japanese came. The French killed most of them. The ones who didn’t die, they took into the city, tied to each other by wires pierced through their palms. Later they hanged them. That was to save the ammunition.” She puts the broom away. “It was the French who did that. It was the British who shot your fathers, not the little girl.”

He drinks more water, but his throat is still dry. “I know.” Rey had said the same thing, when he told her. And Poe, when he told him, had gotten out the book the army gave him, that said who was responsible for what. But the teachers had said, _soldiers do what they must; it is ignorant and brutal people who force soldiers to use violence. You will be soldiers, because you are better than the rest._

Rose leans against the counter next to him. If Finn stands up straight, she barely comes up to his chin. “The Huxleys took me with them when they left. They didn’t take my sister. If she wasn’t — if she hadn’t been as brave as she was, she would have stayed. And she would have died. The French gave Việt Nam to the Japanese without a fight, and the Japanese tore out the crops and took them to Japan and filled the fields with jute and rubber. Two million people starved to death, just in Ha Noi province.” Her voice is musical, even on terrible words. “But she’s a soldier, like me. Braver than me. She risked her life to come here. To ride. To make the connections she made. To make the plans she made. But if I can finish her mission, it will _save_ lives. I don’t even know how many.”

“What if you fail?”

“I won’t fail.” She smiles. “You’ll see. Even in France, there are people who are with us. They call it la sale guerre, what they’re doing to us.” The dirty war. “They can’t hold our country, not if we fight. They took you to be their soldier. But I _chose_ to be a soldier.”

“Why? Why would you choose that?” _Soldiers do what they must._

“Because the future is coming. The Empire of Japan fell. They’ll all fall. There won’t be any more empires. No more colonies, or masters, or bosses. No one will have the power to shoot us or starve us or hang us. To make us do what they want.” Her hand brushes his; her face is brighter than the moonlight through the glass. “The future is coming, if we only fight for it.”

* * *

Ren follows her across the lot, the sundowner breathing down his neck. As if his blood weren’t hot enough already. She’ll understand; she’ll understand better than anyone. And she wants him. She’d been barefoot in Beckett’s office but she’s put her stockings back on to come dancing. His throat feels dry, but the wind is whipping her skirt higher on her legs, and his mouth waters.

He pulls up short when she actually goes to the trunk of her car and gets out a portable record player in creamy plastic, and a few old shellac 78s. His feelings must show on his face, or maybe she just guesses; she throws him a small, flirtatious smile over her shoulder as she unlocks the door.

“Just a little dance without your friends watching. They don’t seem very friendly.”

“They’re okay.”

She turns on the lamp by the bed and sets the record player on the floor. He watches as she bends over it and unsleeves the disc. “This was my first record.” There’s a little pop as she sets the needle down, and then she straightens up, and turns to him, smiling.

_I got a gal who’s always late_  
_Any time we have a date_  
_But I love her_  
_Yes, I love her_

She holds out her hands to him and he pulls her hard against him, closer than would be decent in a public place.

“There,” she breathes, and her hips twist against his to the pulse of the bass. “Isn’t this a nicer way to dance?”

“You want to dance,” he says, not sure if he’s asking or telling, not sure of much except what the rough bump of her body against his does to him. He moves his feet a little, just habit, across the cheap carpet, and her feet track his, smooth and eager.

“Just one dance,” she smiles. “You don’t think I brought you here just to tease you, do you?”

_Is you is or is you ain’t my baby?_  
_The way you’re acting lately makes me doubt_

“Maybe.” He’s got his breath back now, and he knows she can feel him, with the way she pushes close. He lets his hand smooth down the curve of her backside and hold her. “Maybe that’s your way. Give a man a taste, and don’t let him eat.”

_A woman is a creature_  
_That has always been strange_  
_Just when you’re sure of one you find_  
_She’s gone and made a change._

“Oh, I think I let you eat.”

“Well, maybe I’m hungry again.”

She shivers, and he lifts her by her soft ass, kneading and pressing her, rubbing her against his cock where it aches in his jeans. There isn’t an inch of her he couldn’t devour.

_Is you is or is you ain’t my baby?_  
_Maybe baby’s found somebody new_

“Take your clothes off, doll,” he says against her neck. “Take all your clothes off and let me fuck you, won’t you?”

_Or is my baby still my baby true?_

She swallows, hard, and he knows it’s part fear; it’s not an easy thing, for girls, he knows. But all the same he licks his lips because she’s thinking about it, just like he is, thinking about how it would feel. The record spins down into silence, and she kisses his mouth so hard and hungry it burns him.

He puts her down and steps backward, dropping his jacket and shedding his tee shirt, never taking his eyes off her. He sits down on the bed, his hand on the button of his jeans.

“I don’t have any — I don’t have French letters or a diaphragm or anything,” she says, and for a moment she looks away, shy, and scared, and she’s so sweet, so sweet.

“I won’t — I’ll pull out.” He’ll do anything. She looks back at him, and he holds her eyes. “On my honor. I won’t finish inside you.”

Her face tells him she knows that means that he means it. Christ, her hands are shaking as she pulls at the bow at her neck, undoes the little buttons he would have fumbled over. His fingers are unsteady too, as he undoes his jeans.

“Your boots first, I think,” she says, half laugh, half order. It kills him when he wanted to wrap his hand around his cock, but he bends to pull on his laces, doing it blindly, his eyes still fixed on her so he doesn’t miss the moment when the white dress splits and drops around her feet. He’s sure the thing she’s wearing underneath is cheap, but the satiny fabric shines in the yellow light of the lamp and her legs are glossy and the knife glints on the strap of her garter.

He toes off his boots and his socks. “Take it all off, doll.” She frees each stocking slowly, point by point, until they slither down her legs. He leans back on the bed, unzipping his jeans as he takes in the shadowy valleys of her body as she reaches behind her to unfasten her corselet. He pushes his underwear down with his pants; she catches the foundation garment as it drops from her body, and he reaches out and catches her by the waist of her panties, pulling her between his knees. Her tits are right there, inches from his mouth, nipples like brown sugar. All her skin; it’s all right there where he could put his hands on it.

It’s not like her voice hadn’t come back to him, in his idle moments all day. _Sometimes it feels — more real. When it’s rough._ But _sometimes_ isn’t every time.

“How do you want it?” He digs his fingers into her hips, just a little, through the silky fabric. “I’ll do it any way you like.”

She puts her shoulders back and raises her chin and doesn’t _that_ do lovely things to the shape of her, but he watches her wide mouth and the quick tongue that wets her lips. “I want you to hold me down,” she says. “I want you to hold me tight. And I want to scratch you, and bite you, and I don’t want you to stop.” She reaches forward and one fingernail traces a slow, hard line up the muscle of his arm. “Not unless I say so.”

* * *

She holds her breath. His eyes are closed, his lips parted. When her nail finds the bone of his shoulder, and she smooths the pads of her fingers back down over the line she’s drawn, those deep dark eyes open again, and his deep hoarse voice asks, “Gonna make me bleed?”

“Do you want me to?” She’s not afraid of him. That warm wind is no poison sumoom, and this animal under her hand is no wolf, no bear. She could bite open his throat, right now, she thinks.

His dark eyes flicker fire. “Do your worst,” he snarls, and throws her down beside him on bed. The air goes out of her and he doesn’t let her get it back; he rolls over on top of her, and his hands cinch tight around her waist, just like she wanted, just like she asked. She gasps, and he kisses her, hot and smothering, until she nips his silky, sulky lower lip; when she does that, he growls, and pushes her up the bed, sucking at her collarbone and her nipple and the underside of her breast. She rakes her nails up his back, then up his neck into his hair, and he hisses and moans and shifts his hips so that his leaking cock is trapped between his stomach and her leg. It burns her, half threat, half promise, even as his mouth makes her back arch and her cunt twitch and clench. His hands wrap so far around her waist he can press his fingertips into her spine, pushing her breasts up just so; his tongue toys with her nipple and she whimpers and claws at his shoulders.

He wraps his left arm all the way around her, pressing her to him, and then two fingers of his right hand are pressing at her lips. It’s an invitation if she ever saw one; she sucks them in and closes her teeth just enough to hold them in place while she runs her tongue over them. He shudders and curses and she bites down; he howls and wrenches his fingers free. She laughs, wild, and twists against him, spreading her legs.

He presses his wet fingers against her, stroking through her lips until he finds her entrance, and then pressing in deeper; he pulls her even closer and she can see he’s baring his teeth at her. She bends her head and sinks her teeth into his shoulder, and she feels his cock twitch and harden against her thigh even as he grunts and plunges his fingers into her, twisting and rubbing.

“Naughty dolly.” It makes her wetter just to hear his voice. “You need to be fucked.”

“You want to fuck me,” she corrects him, but it comes out as a high gasp; his fingers are working, working, and she feels herself opening.

He pulls her up, kissing her ferociously. “Sauce,” he says against her mouth; “impudence. Naughty dolls get fucked.”

She wants it. He holds her so tight, like he never wants to let go, and his soft, obscene mouth moves so ravenously at her throat, in the tender curve of her neck; she wants him. She grinds down against his hand and digs her nails into his arms until he groans and pants. “Fuck me, then, Ren. Fuck me like you want to.”

He drops her, cursing, grabbing for her thighs with his hands, pushing her knees back and apart. She lunges for him, biting and scratching, but he doesn’t shrink back, and when she feels him between her legs, pressing in, he gasps, _”Harder,_ Rey; do it harder; make me bleed,” and he’s hurting her, he’s so big; he’s splitting her open; it’s only fair; she slashes wildly, twisting, crying out as he pushes himself inside her, moaning her name. She catches him across his broad white chest, and scores a red line up his throat and across his _face;_ she didn’t mean to, but _oh._ She could kill him. Rip him open and keep him forever. He’s so deep inside her.

He gasps and seizes her wrists; he pins them to the bed by her head as he thrusts again and she arches and writhes underneath him, baring her teeth. Nothing, nothing has ever felt like this. She opens her mouth; helpless, meaningless sounds spill out.

“You feel so — ” He thrusts again. “Knew you’d — ” Again. His hands are like iron around her wrists. He speeds up, catching a rhythm that almost makes her sob; she’d beg him not to stop but she can’t think words, any words, let alone the sweet dirty English he’s whimpering in her ear. “Rey. Fuck. Take it so fucking good.” He’s pounding into her, slamming her down, talking through his teeth. “Good little doll. Good. So tight.” He slows for a moment, hissing as he slowly pulls himself out of her; she wraps her legs around his waist and cries out for it, and he gives in, grunting and groaning. “Make me bleed. Fuck. Take my cock. You like that, doll?”

“Yes. Yes. Like that.” It’s not like his mouth on her; it’s harsher, hotter; it’s something he’s ripping out of her. She feels herself clenching down on him, her hips working with his, her body fighting for what it wants. _Give it. Give it to me._

He does. He stops talking, and he fucks her, steady and deep, holding her tight, and it happens so hard she thinks she’ll pass out, thinks she’ll die. She doesn’t know what sounds she makes, what her body or her face does; she doesn’t know anything at all.

He’s talking, she thinks. He says something, and then he lets go of her wrists and pulls out of her, groaning her name; she gets a dizzy glimpse of his cock, hard and red and dripping wet, and then he’s fallen forward on one elbow. His black hair falls into her eyes and warmth spatters her stomach.

She aches between her legs and her breath comes hard, but her head is fuzzy with bliss. She runs a soft, stroking hand through his hair, and he kisses her throat with shaking lips. “Rey.” She sighs in answer, and he kisses her again, in just the same spot.

He untucks the bedspread and drags a corner of the sheet up to wipe her clean. She watches, legs still spread, drowsiness lying more and more heavily on her.

“Do you want a cigarette?” he asks. “I have some in my jacket.” She only shakes her head, but when he pulls back the sheet hesitantly, she rouses herself to climb underneath it.

He pulls her to him in what she already thinks of as his way: under his arm, tight against his chest. She squirms herself comfortable in his grip, and he pets her mussed hair back from her ear. The motel lamp has a cheap paper shade that throws a meaningless pattern on the wall by the bed.

“But you like to be called Rey, right?” She turns her head to him, showing him her curious frown. “Not…Malka, I mean.”

“No,” she says, and lays her head back down. “I’m here. I’m American. I’m Rey.”

“But you told those men on the phone you were Malka. Malka Something.”

“They’re… agents. They’re looking for my parents. I only call them on Thursdays, to check in.”

He hesitates. “But — if your parents were in Warsaw. If they were — Jews.”

“They took me in a taxi to the edge of the city,” she explains, “when they knew for sure the Germans were coming. And they put me in another man’s car, and told me that he was going to take me to Palestine, and they’d meet me there. In Jaffa. So I think they had a plan to get out, too. Only they didn’t come, and later I heard the Germans came much faster than anybody thought they would, so everyone’s plans were ruined. But that doesn’t mean they died. They were the kinds of people who had plans. Not the kind that went quietly. They had a plan for me.”

He’s quiet, and she goes on, looking at the pattern of the lampshade on the wall. Soft little dots, set on spidery-thin curves, like diagrams of atoms, or the weather map in the newspaper. “There’s still a whole city’s worth of people in a displaced persons’ camp in Germany, you know. And of course they might have heard about how bad things were in Israel, and waited before they went to look for me — ” She breaks off, because of course that would be the worst thing. If they were in Jaffa, looking for her, and she hadn’t waited. How could she tell them she’d left for such a stupid, selfish reason? _My friend said that there would be a war, that the British would go and I would go hungry, and that he could force the major to give me a visa, and I could go to America with him and Finn, and be an American, and he said you would have wanted me to go; if you sent me away from a war once —_

He shifts his head closer to hers; she can feel his breath grazing the top of her head, and she steadies herself. “But the brokers will find them. They’re like me; they find people. And when they find them, I’ll go get them and _then_ I’ll be Malka Szmaciarz again. But not here.” She snorts a little laugh. “Can you imagine? People here can’t even _spell_ Szmarciaz. So I’m Reina Jaffa.” She reaches out and switches off the light.

“Rey to your friends.” His hand strokes the top slope of her breast slowly, over and over, gentle as air.

“Yes, exactly.” She sighs as she settles back into his arms. She’s sore, and soaked with sweat, and the muscles in her thighs burn, but the rhythm of his hand seems matched to her heartbeat, and his chest rises and falls at her back like the deck of a boat, carrying her to safety, carrying her home.

She dreams she is sitting on the dock at Jaffa with the man who brought her from Warszawa. The wound in his head is bright and fresh. _Why did they kill you?_ she asks him. He shrugs, and answers her in the major’s voice: _History. In this god-forsaken dustbin of a land, today’s crimes are all for yesterday’s sins._ Then she is in the office on Resistencia; the fan is stirring a hot, dry wind, and Mrs. Solo repeats her husband’s desolate words: _I did wrong by him._

She wakes up, cold. His arms aren’t around her anymore; for an icy moment she thinks he’s gone and left her there alone. Then she hears him, the snuffling, smothered sound of him crying in his sleep. She hurries to sit up on her heels, shaking him; he’s rolled away from her but she pulls him back towards her. The only light in the room is the mix of moonlight and streetlamp that filters through the blinds, but his pale skin seems to glow in the dark. “Shhh. Shhh,” she whispers. “It’s okay. It’s all right. It’s only a dream.” His black hair, sleep-mussed, falls away from the big shells of his ears. They tug at her heart, and at something else, in her head; she reaches out to touch them, and he jerks awake, eyes wide and frightened and so, so young, and she drops her hand, falling backwards; for an instant, they mirror each other, wide eyes and gasping mouths.

“Ben Solo,” she breathes. “You’re Ben Solo.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **ojalá** — Direct equivalent of Arabic _inshalla,_ meaning "God willing."  
>  **Naqab** — (Arabic) The major desert in Palestine/Israel. (Negev, in Hebrew.)  
>  **pins** — (slang) legs.  
>  **veladora** — A tall novena candle with the image of a saint painted on it ([e.g.](http://webscan.me/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/veladora-candle-photo-of-candles-ca-united-states.jpg)).  
>  **castizo** — Spanish casta term for someone with 1/4 or less native ancestry and the rest European.  
>  **mestizo** — Spanish casta term for someone with more than 1/4 native ancestry and the rest European.  
>  **chino** — (Spanish) lit. Chinese, but sometimes used carelessly to mean Asians generally.  
>  **Warszawa** — Polish name for Warsaw, pronounced "Varshava."  
>  **mallam** — Nigerian term for a Muslim educator.  
>  **French letter** — Condom.
> 
> The sundowner is indeed a very different experience from a sumoom (from سموم, _poison),_ which blows in North Africa and the Levant, but they have in common that they are caused by very specific intersections of geography with high-pressure systems.
> 
> Beliefs in Vietnam about life after death vary widely, and Communist ideology disapproved of all of them, but a common belief is that people become ghosts if they die unnaturally, especially if they die young, and most especially if they are buried far from home.
> 
> Madam C.J. Walker produced many products for straightening African hair; Johnson's Ultra Wave was a straightening product, new in 1954, which could produce something like the "conk" effect without a visit to the barber to be doused with lye. (It still would sting like hell, though.)
> 
> 78 RPM records are physically large but can hold just over 3 minutes of music per side. Hence the "3-minute pop song." Rey's album dates from 1945; 78s were on their way out in 1954.
> 
> I don't have nearly enough space in these notes to get into the colonial/post-colonial history mentioned in this chapter, but just briefly and messily and irresponsibly:
> 
> Jaffa was a major port city and administrative center of the British Mandate of Palestine.  Intercommunal strife between Jews and Muslims, always low-key encouraged by the British, became intense in 1935, and would have been in full swing when Rey arrived in 1939; part of the reason for the conflict was that the British set a very low limit on the number of Jews allowed to enter the country at a time when many Jews wanted to leave Europe.  There were Zionist organizations devoted to the removal of Jewish children from Europe to Palestine, but Zionists also nurtured an unpleasant attitude towards European Jews who "went quietly." The last Displaced Persons camp for European Jews didn't close until 1957.
> 
> Popular resistance to French occupation swelled in Vietnam in the 30s and 40s, encouraged by both Japan and China, and French responses grew increasingly savage and inhumane. When the Japanese invaded, the French chose to surrender the territory more or less wholesale, partly because the Vichy government, as an ally of Japan, encouraged it, and partly because fighting the Japanese would have meant destroying their own colonial infrastructure of roads and railways, which would have made the country almost impossible to retake; the DeGaullist faction, which was well-represented in the Colonial government, agreed with the Vichy degree of surrender because they were willing to gamble that Japan would lose the war and they would be able to re-take their colony in the condition they left it. Japan, despite spreading propaganda about pan-Asian unity, treated Vietnam as a source of resources and its people as completely expendable.
> 
> The contemporary nation of Nigeria was ruled by the British as the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria (though also as three separate protectorates, then two, which were finally merged), partly through the Royal Niger Company. As in India, the British leaned heavily on indirect rule, leaving local rulers, who answered to the British, in charge of administering the territory. However, as time went on, more and more power was transferred directly to British rulers, and they began to assemble military forces with conscripted African troops. Though in some ways the Muslim north of the country was regarded as more "backwards" by the British, the educational system, derived from teachings in Timbuktu, was regarded favorably, and Muslims were considered to be prime material for administrators and petty officers. I have no specific reference for the massacre that kills Finn's father, but I can tell you that walking around almost any city in India, which was governed on similar principles, you will find memorials to victims of similar events. The top priority of British colonial authority in Nigeria was to "pacify the country." 
> 
> If you don't know what went on at Santa Anita Racetrack during WWII... wait a chapter.


	10. A Night for Ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone stares at her. Then, slowly, Hans staggers to his feet. Rey sees that the leather of his chair is stamped with the image of a flowering tree. “A family of monsters. We know whose family that is, don’t we?” 
> 
> He towers over his wife, even in her heels, but she curls her lip and the edge in her words could cut glass. “Tell me. Tell me, Hans Solo. Whose family is such a disgrace to him that he had to change his name? What name did he get rid of?” 
> 
> “You think these things stay buried, Leila, but they come back; I tell you – every breeder knows it – blood will tell; your – ” 
> 
> He cuts himself off and she fills the breach, furious. “Did you think our son was an idiot? Did you think he wouldn’t ask how a _horse rancher_ made money during the _war?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for homophobia, mistreatment of the mentally ill, and American History.
> 
> Another chapter with thanks to [Bombastique](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bombastique/pseuds/Bombastique) ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/Bombastique1)) for reading.

His hands scrabble and clench in the sheets, and his face twists, but she’s seen it. She should have seen it before. That skinny boy has grown into his shoulders, armored himself in muscle, but he’s still the scared, cornered animal from Mrs. Solo’s photograph, gone mad with panic. The tears he’d cried in his sleep are still in his lashes, glistening on his temple and the bridge of his nose, but he wrenches his face into a sneer.

“Ben Solo is dead.”

 _“You’re him._ They think you’re dead but — ”

“He’s dead; I killed him myself.”

She reaches out her hands, trying to soothe him. “Don’t be ridiculous — ”

He thrashes away from her, backing across the bed. He goes up on his knees, trying to loom over her, drawing the sheet up over his nakedness. There’s spittle on his lips and the whites of his eyes are bright in the dark. “I killed him; I slit his throat and threw the body in the Salsipuedes River!”

“That river is dry. It’s _been_ dry since before he — before _you_ disappeared. What happened? Where did you go?”

He springs out of the bed, turning away from her, grabbing at his clothing where it lies on the floor. “He deserved it,” he says, viciously; he’s not looking at her, but even with the benefit of his eyes his fingers fumble on the button of his jeans. “He deserved to die.”

“Why?” Rey spits. “Because he had sex with men?” His head snaps up. “All _kinds_ of men do that; practically all of them some time or another; it’s a damn fool thing to be ashamed of. And a stupid, _hateful_ thing to say you’d _kill_ somebody over!”

He steps towards her, shirtless and barefoot and crazed. “You think that’s all he had to be ashamed of? A boy from that family?”

“Your family _misses_ you; they _love_ you — your mother’s looking everywhere for you — ” She wants to beat at his chest with her fists. How dare he. How dare he do this to his family. How dare he suggest that someone like Poe ought to — 

“Bullshit,” he growls down at her. “You’ve got some little girl’s memory of a happy family in fucking _Poland_ and you’re pouring money down the drain to daydream you’ll get it back, and you want to think everything ends like a fairy tale.”

It’s suddenly hard to breathe. It’s him; he’s standing too close to her; he’s blocking all the air. She backs away. “You don’t know anything.”

“Those people you’re calling are stringing you along. Taking your money for something they’ll never find. The people in that camp in Germany? You think the Red Cross hasn’t published their names 100 times? If they were there you’d know by now. You’re being swindled.”

He’s just angry because she got out of bed to call them. That’s all. She’d tell him so, but she still can’t breathe.

He snatches up his shirt and drags it over his head. “Probably your family was nice. Probably they were nice, good people. But they’re dead, Rey.”

That’s not true. She doesn’t know they’re dead. She only knows all the ways they _could_ have died, typhus, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, pneumonia, dysentery, starvation, a bullet in the head or a beating in the street or a suicide by poison or the stories they told on the docks at Jaffa which couldn’t be true but were; she’d seen the pictures; she’d heard the radio reports. But she doesn’t know, she doesn’t know which of all those ways, and so she doesn’t know they’re dead. Not really. Not for sure. “You don’t know that.”

“You don’t know because you don’t want to know.” It’s hard to see him, hard to focus on his face, but she thinks he’s dressed now, jacket and boots and all. “Ben Solo was a monster, from a family of monsters,” he says. “He deserved what he got.”

And that doesn’t make any sense, and then the motel room door slams.

* * *

The Solos gave Finn the room Poe slept in last night, which leaves Poe with the choice between two rooms: the one his mother used to sleep in, or Ben Solo's old room. If he has to bed down with a ghost, he picks the one he was hired to chase over the one who chases him. After a day of frantic training and a hasty dinner, he can barely stay awake long enough to take his shoes off before he falls on the dusty blanket. He sleeps like the dead for four hours, but wakes after midnight, stiff and sore and as alert as if reveille had been played in his ear. 

He puts his aching legs over the side of the bed and looks around the room, at the boxes that surround him, and imagines Ben on the doorstep of Rancho Esperanza, twenty-two and expelled, fresh from a fight he picked with a powerful, unscrupulous man who knew his worst secrets, wondering how long he can hide where he’s been and who he is, barricading himself behind these boxes. He opens one. 

_A Dictionary of Japanese Compound Verbs, with an introduction of Japanese cultural and linguistic affiliations with the Pacific Quadrilateral._ _Conduct of American Diplomacy._ _The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis._ _Conjugation of Japanese verbs in the modern spoken Japanese, with lists of colloquial verbs, nominal verbs, etc._ _Japanese Military and Technical Terms._ And _The Foreign Service of the United States._ A pretty clear picture, all told. Poe personally sees no real appeal in a diplomatic post in Japan, but it’s certainly the sort of thing he could see Mrs. Solo telling people her son was doing.

There's something else, too, at the bottom of the box — an old edition of _The Journal of General Psychology,_ stolen from the University library by the label on its spine. It's a sturdily-bound academic thing, but as he opens it he sees that some of pages have been half-wrenched away from the binding, as if someone had started to tear them out and then stopped. He flattens them out. "Conditioning and Extinction and Their Relation to Drive." 

It takes him a minute or two, going over the technical language with his bleary eyes before he understands. "Conditioning" means training, here; “drive” means desire. The doctor who wrote the article is talking about training rats, and specifically, about training them to stop wanting what they want. He doesn't need to finish — doesn't even need the signs of Ben's hands ripping at the paper — to know that it doesn't work. No matter how hard you try, what rewards you get or punishments you take, you can’t train your heart out of your chest.

He washes himself, and the hot shower feels good on his aching muscles, but it doesn’t help. He remembers Ben Solo as a retiring boy with a stormy, sensitive face. It hadn’t even occurred to him to wonder what they might have in common. He’d felt alone, and trapped, and he’d seized hold of planes, because the Air Force would give him a way out of here. Ben Solo hadn’t seen any way out. Was there one? 

Poe doesn’t think he needs a way out, not anymore. He just needs not to get caught in a police raid. Not to nod at the wrong man in the bathhouse or the public restroom. Not to fall in love with any more men who think what goes on between them is just a schoolboy’s game. There are harder things.

He goes for a smoke in the courtyard; maybe it’ll help him sleep.

He’s two cigarettes down and working on a third when he sees the headlights. Someone’s heading for the ranch at a breakneck pace. He’s about to run into the house and wake Hans and Leila when the car takes a curve with a particular slingshot acceleration that he recognizes from the first time he saw her do it on a snarling old Norton. He runs to the gate; if Rey’s running from someone, she won’t have time to fiddle with it.

But he can’t see or hear anyone behind her to explain her speed. She skids to a stop beside him; he can see her through the window, throwing her whole weight into the parking brake. She jumps out, fire in her eyes. “Poe, I’ve got to — Poe, Ben Solo’s not dead. He’s here, in Santa Teresa.”

He falls back. “Who told you that?”

“Nobody. I saw him. I — more than saw him.” It’s dark, but she’s left the headlights on and he can see her blush as a deepening of the shadows on her face. “He’s not — he may have gone to that bar, but” — she pulls him close by his arm and hisses in his ear — “I’ve fucked him three times. How on earth am I going to tell his _mother?_ But she ought to know, right?”

He reaches out, patting her, trying to slow her down. Has she lost her mind? Not that there aren’t men who’d go to Mo’s Jewel and then take a tumble with a pretty girl like Rey. He knows it’s not just Finn, or just men who went to British schools; Rey, the fearless little beast, bought a copy of the Kinsey Report the week it appeared and they’d passed it around the office, the tensest book club in Southern California. But she’s talking nonsense. “You found Ben Solo, went to bed with him, did it three times, and then came driving up here like a maniac to tell us about it?”

“I didn’t _know_ it was him,” she says, as if he’s the nonsensical one here. “He’s all filled out and his hair is different and he’s running with a _Japanese gang_ so forgive me if I didn’t recognize him right away. And anyway it wasn’t all tonight.”

He stares at her. “Was he… he was the gangster you were stepping out with tonight?”

 _“Yes,”_ she hisses, as if he ought to have deduced this himself as soon as she got out of the car. “But when I recognized him, he kept insisting he’d _killed_ Ben Solo; he said he’d cut his throat and thrown his body in the river, which doesn’t make any sense; the river was dry by then, Han said, and anyway it was _obviously_ him.” She gestures to her head, indicating wide ears and a long nose. “He said — he said — ” She falters, and finishes quietly, “He left. He wouldn’t come back to his family.”

Poe’s head is spinning. The picture of Ben Solo he’s been painting in his head is smearing and shifting. He’s been focusing on the expulsion, the lost boy with a ruined future, spotted in the wrong place by a hometown jefe. He should have been thinking more about the pool cue, the violence that left the man unconscious on the barroom floor. _Like somebody broke his face for him,_ the trade on the docks said. And now the Japanese mob?

“We have to tell them, don’t we?” Rey sounds more hesitant.

He ducks into her car and switches the lights off. “Yeah. We do.”

In the courtyard, she falls behind, and then stops, and he turns back to her, frowning. She’s huddled in on herself, standing statue-still, the last remnants of the sundowner ruffling her dress and hair. “Don’t worry about telling them about — I’ll handle it,” he says, gently.

She swallows. “Poe. Do you — ”

“Yes?” he prompts after she’s silent for a while.

Her voice is a strained whisper. “Do you think my parents are dead?”

It suddenly occurs to him that she might be making it up. That she might want the vanished dead to be alive so badly she’d muddle it up, her parents and the Solos’ only child. He’s only ever known her to be practical — a good tracker, a good detective with clever hunches and steely nerves. But there’s no denying she’s a bit not-right about her parents sometimes. He stares at her, trying to read her in the dark.

“I told him,” she says, so soft. Like the pain is crushing her voice into nothingness. “He heard me call… the agents I call, and I told him. And he said they were dead. Do you think they’re dead?”

She’s not making it up. She’s coming right. But oh, it must hurt her. He seizes her in his arms and rocks her. His thin little desert hare, so quick and so brave, crouching in the scant shadow of a bare-limbed bush. “You did everything they would have wanted. Whatever they did in this life, they did to keep you safe. You stayed alive. You did it for them.”

“They must have fought,” Rey says into his shoulder, dull and desperate. “They wouldn’t just have gone quietly, would they?”

“Rey.” He shakes her gently. “Don’t.” She sniffs, nodding, and he fishes out his handkerchief to press into her palm. “C’mon. Since you stole my case, the least you can do is be with me when I report.”

* * *

_She didn’t even try to follow me,_ Ren thinks, pushing the Black Knight through the deserted streets. _She hates me now. It doesn’t matter._ He has his own motel room; he’s paid up through the week. He should go there and sleep and forget about her. _She’ll tell the police. She’ll tell my mother._ Tell them what? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.

He shouldn't have expected more. No matter how bright a girl shines in the desert sun. You can't expect any good luck you don't make for yourself. That was always Hans Solo's problem. He relied on luck. It would have been lucky, to meet a girl in the middle of nowhere and then keep meeting her. To have her want you, have her trust you. You can’t depend on having that kind of luck. _She didn't want you,_ he tells himself. _She didn’t want to know about you. She's just fast, that's all. She’d have gone with anybody._

He feels a phantom weight at his back, a phantom pressure of her arms around his chest.

He sees the sign, _U.S. 101, Lorde Varder Memorial Highway,_ with the directive arrows for north and south, and he yanks the bike around. He can’t leave town. He has business. He’s making himself a life, with Fāsuto Ōdā and Oka-san. A life where people are afraid of him. That life is the best way to make sure Ben Solo stays dead.

He steers the Black Knight towards the hills, and accelerates.

* * *

Rey waits awkwardly with Mr. Solo while his wife dresses. Poe settles them all in the uncomfortable, elaborate furniture of the front parlor, old Colonial Spanish chairs and benches of dark wood, their leather padding fastened with rows of heavy studs. Rey takes a place a little ways away from him, just on the edge of the circle of light the hanging lamp throws. Hans slumps in his stiff chair, turning his desolate face away, and Leila sits straight upright, queenly, hands perfectly still among the grey-striped folds of her full skirt.

Rey has imagined this moment so often, for herself; the moment when she would call, and the agents would say _yes, alive._ She imagined it so many times so she wouldn’t waste time, when it came, with choking, or crying, or gasping _Mamusia, Tateh;_ so she’d hang up the phone and _go._ But if they’re dead, she’ll never go, and he said they were dead. 

Mrs. Solo doesn’t choke, or cry; she springs to her feet and she laughs, a small, triumphant shout of laughter, her eyes fixed over all of their heads, bright and defiant. As if she’s won a game against an opponent none of them can see. _Maybe it’s God,_ Rey thinks. _Maybe she’s stared down God, and won._

She swallows down the rising thought. _I’ve lost._

When Poe explains that Ben is the man Rey spoke to in Barstow, the white man who works for the Japanese mobsters, Mr. Solo jerks back, and his head hits the wall behind the chair so hard he yelps. His wide eyes search for Rey and pin her where she sits. He is trying to ask questions, she can tell that much, but she doesn’t understand them or know how to answer. But she knows he is frightened and confused, and her heart aches for him.

And then comes the really difficult part. Poe says something smooth and indirect about Ben keeping company with women, and Mr. Solo’s eyes snap to him instead, but it was Rey who found him, who confronted him and called him by his name, and it’s to Rey that both the Solos’ eyes turn, starving for every crumb of information. It’s Rey who has to explain what he said, why he’s out there in the night somewhere instead of here.

She licks her dry lips. Tries not to remember whose lips they were pressed against just hours ago. “He said… he said Ben Solo was dead. That he had killed him, and — and thrown his body in the Salsipuedes River. And I said that didn’t make any sense, that the river was dry. And he said — ” She falters. _He said my parents were dead and I was a deluded little girl. If Ben Solo is dead, where is Malka Szmarciarz?_ “He said — he said Ben Solo was a monster, from a family of monsters, and he deserved what he got.”

Everyone stares at her. Then, slowly, Hans staggers to his feet. Rey sees that the leather of his chair is stamped with the image of a flowering tree. “A family of monsters. We know whose family that is, don’t we?”

He towers over his wife, even in her heels, but she curls her lip and the edge in her words could cut glass. “Tell me. Tell me, Hans Solo. Whose family is such a disgrace to him that he had to change his name?”

“You think these things stay buried, Leila, but they come back; I tell you — every breeder knows it — blood will tell; your — ”

He cuts himself off and she fills the breach, furious. “Did you think our son was an idiot? Did you think he wouldn’t ask how a _horse rancher_ made money during the _war?”_

“I may be a criminal, Leila, but I’m not a monster.”

Leila’s voice is unsteady. “If I was ever a monster to my son, it’s because you made me one.”

Nobody breathes. _Poe,_ Rey thinks, _Poe will say something and make it right,_ but when she dares to dart her eyes at him he looks as frozen and frightened as she feels. In the big house, the little circle of light thrown by the lamp on its iron chain feels like a gladiator’s ring, like blood could spill at any second. Then Han turns, with a muffled cry that might be his wife’s name, and rushes out into the dark.

Leila sinks down into her chair as if she were fainting. Poe leans toward her anxiously, but she gestures after he husband. “Please. That idiot. Wherever he thinks he’s going. Please don’t let him leave.” With a nod, Poe is up and gone, his footsteps sharp on the tile. Which leaves Rey here alone with Leila. The mother of a son who isn’t dead. The mother of a son who left her.

“He’s right,” Mrs. Solo says, faint and desolate. “Of course he’s right.”

“Right about what?”

“Ben didn’t mean his father. He adored Han. He meant me, my family.”

“The Orreagas?” In the car, Mr. Solo had said he _wished_ Ben had their name. Clearly they’d made enemies, to have their orchard torched, but —

“They were my family,” Leila says. “I wish they were my only family. I meant the Skywalkers.”

“That’s a real name? I thought your brother had made it up.” It’s the sort of thing orphans do. _I did it, after all. And if my parents are dead, I’m an orphan._

Mrs. Solo snorts. “It sounds like the sort of thing he would make up, doesn’t it? The batty old sun-worshipper. But no, he got it from our father.” She sighs. “Anderson Skywalker. Who was… prominent, you might say. They named the highway after him, after all.”

Rey frowns. “I thought the highway was named after the man who burned the orchard.”

Leila’s smile is thin. “I think he thought ‘Lorde Varder’ sounded more patrician and more… intimidating. He was very interested in being intimidating.”

* * *

Poe doesn’t have trouble catching Mr. Solo; he doesn’t even head for his car. Poe catches the white flash of his shirt as he climbs the bare hill beside the paddock, and follows him up. When he gets to the top of the hill, Ben’s father is standing still, staring off south towards the sea.

“Of course she’s right,” he says, as Poe approaches. “She’s always right. Ben could never forgive me, what I did in the war.”

Poe frowns. “You were in the Pacific — Guadalcanal, you said?”

“I saw Guadalcanal. Then I was too old. My eyes were too bad. They sent me home. But what was I supposed to do at _home?”_ He gestures scornfully at the ranch below him. “No races. I got — we could have just lived quietly on Leila’s money, you know? But that wasn’t good enough for me. I had to feel like I was something _different,_ something _better._ I wanted people to know my name, and I didn’t care what kind of people or what they knew it for.”

He rubs his white hair with his hands. Poe fishes his box of cigarettes out and offers one wordlessly. Mr. Solo accepts with a sigh, but it takes him two tries to light it.

“I got a friend, down in Mexico. Nando. You remember him? He used to come around sometimes. Dark-complected fella.”

Poe squints. “Was he the one in the serape?”

“That’s the one. Stylish bastard. Always thought he might have his eye on Leila. But anyway he offered to go in with me on a boat. Because during a war, there are always things people want, and have a hard time getting. And the thing about Santa Teresa is — if you know how to sail, those islands make real good cover. There’s a dozen little coves where you can hide out with your lights doused and wait for the Coast Guard to be on their way.”

Poe feels his eyebrows knit. “Is that what that horseflesh trader was on about this morning?”

“Damn him. I don’t know how he knows.”

“So you were black market during the war? Smugglers?” It’s not great, and there’d have been jail time attached if he were caught, but… “I’ve heard worse.”

“Sure, sure. We all have.” Hans scratches the back of his neck, the cigarette dangling from his lip. “The problem is what I _told_ Ben and Leila the whole time I was doing it. Ben loved the boat, thought it was the best thing in the world. But I can’t take a fourteen-year-old on a dirty run to Mexico! And of course Leila wanted to know where I was and where the money was coming from and why I was always on the telephone. So I told them… I told them it was classified.”

“You told them you were a _spy?”_

“Not in so many words, okay?” The red glow of Han’s cigarette falters as he drags on it. “I thought Leila’d be the one to figure it out, but it was Ben. God help me. He thought — Luke was overseas in a POW camp, writing brave letters with the wrong hand, and Ben thought I was some kind of hero, too. He was trying to be a good little soldier, just like his dad and his uncle. Just a damn boy, trying so _fucking_ hard to be a man.” He spits the cigarette out violently, and grinds it viciously into the ground. “And then he finds out his dad’s a lying scumbag.”

Poe wants to say something consoling. _It’s not that bad. It’s not like you were selling state secrets to the Japanese._ But _hey, at least you weren’t an out-and-out traitor_ doesn’t actually seem that reassuring. He fishes out a cigarette for himself.

* * *

The tequila put Finn to sleep but it can’t keep him there. He knows the sound that woke him is the sound of a door slamming, but it’s his waking mind that knows it. His sleeping mind called it a gunshot, and his instincts roll him out of bed and flatten him against the floor before his waking mind can catch up.

He’s ready to climb back into bed when his panic-sharpened ears catch the very soft steps outside his door. He hurries his pants on and shrugs the guayabera Arturo left out for him over his undershirt.

It’s Rose, of course, creeping down the hall barefoot, in her shabby dress. He remembers the photo he has of her, in the purse still shoved under his mattress, and the long, fitted sheath she’s wearing in it. He wonders if she wore it by choice, or if the Huxleys insisted. 

There’s light at the front of the house, and that’s what Rose is tracking. She comes to a stop just behind an arch at the top of the stairs that lead to the front parlor, and he stops a few steps behind her. Mrs. Solo is talking, but he can’t quite make out the words. Finn takes half a step forward. He’d thought Rose knew he was there, but she proves him wrong when she gasps and whirls. “Chị!”

“Who’s there?” Mrs. Solo calls, sharply. Rose is looking at him strangely, with relief and disappointment and sadness. “Bibiana — ?”

“It’s me,” Finn replies. “I — heard a noise. I thought I’d see what was up.”

He gestures to Rose that she can go back, but to his surprise she raises her voice. “I heard it too. I’m sorry, Mrs. Solo.” She takes a few hesitant steps down the stairs. “Did something… happen?” Finn follows her and is surprised to see Rey sitting beside Mrs. Solo.

“Rose,” Mrs. Solo says heavily. “I’m so sorry to have disturbed you. I’m afraid my husband and I had a … quarrel.”

“Did someone — ” Rose begins, and then stops. 

Under the yellow lamplight, Mrs. Solo looks puzzled. “Did someone what?”

Rose sits down abruptly on the stairs, wrapping her arms around her legs. “Some people — in my country,” she murmurs into her knees. “They say when a person is murdered, they can become a ghost. Especially if they die far from home. And young women, when they’re dead — can be powerful — ” She breaks off and straightens her head, squaring her shoulders. “But it’s only uneducated peasants. Who say that. People who can’t read or write even their own language.”

There’s a little silence. Finn thinks he can feel the pain and shame radiating from Rose. She’d taken him for her sister’s ghost. He wants to step between her and the white women in the parlor; whatever’s actually going on in their heads, he knows Rose can only think they’re looking at her with contempt.

“I haven’t seen your sister,” Mrs. Solo says softly. “But it’s a night for ghosts.” She clears her throat, and gestures to the empty seats around her. “Metaphorically, I mean. You can go back to bed if you want, of course, but you’d like to stay with us in the light for a while, you’re welcome to sit here while I dig up the past.”

Hesitantly, Rose unfolds herself and walks slowly forward. Finn follows her, watching as her face emerges from the shadow. She sits hesitantly, as if she thinks she might be punished for sitting like a guest. He takes a seat for himself at the very edge of the light, leaning against the back of the stiff bench, and keeps himself still to watch and listen.

“My birth-father, Anderson Skywalker came to Santa Teresa as a young man. He was a lawyer, but he wasn’t terribly successful; he made money as a land manager to Ben Kenobi. Old Ben couldn’t own property, you see — he came from Japan, so he wasn’t eligible to be naturalized. So he made an agreement with his friend, that the property would be in his name, and he’d help manage it. And Ben would take the profits, and pay Anderson a good salary out of them.”

“If the deed was in his name, what was stopping him from just taking all the profit for himself?” Rey objects.

Mrs. Solo smiles dryly. “Honor, in theory. Friendship. The arrangement worked for many years, I’m told. Then in 1900 there was a wildfire in the hills; they both went out to fight it. They fought like hell and they managed to save an estate in Monte Vista which belonged to an opera singer named Paz Mayberry. She was very grateful for their help, of course, and she and Anderson Skywalker fell in love. His origins were… obscure, and she was an international star, but somehow, he convinced her to marry him. He used her money to finance his first political campaigns.”

“What made him want to run for office?”

“He was the sort of man who always believed he knew best how things ought to be. Everything would go better if only _he_ were running it.” Rey snorts at that, and even Rose smiles a little. “I think the more involved he became, the less possible it seemed to him that anything else could be worthwhile. Including his friendships.”

“He took the land.” Rey’s voice is flat and certain. “He took his friend’s land for himself.” In the warm night, in the airy open space of the big house with its white-washed walls, Finn feels for a vertiginous moment as if he doesn’t know where or when he is. He looks down, to focus on the tell-tale Spanish tile, and sees Rose’s bare feet. She’s seated more firmly now, listening with a frown.

* * *

Ren’s deep in the foothills when what he already knows — that he has nowhere to go — begins to filter through to him. He should go back to his motel room. He shouldn’t just burn gas for no reason. But he can’t stop. He just can’t. If he holds still the past will drown him. If he holds still his heart will eat him alive. He can feel it clawing at his chest, hungry and furious.

She could have followed him. She could have asked him to stay. She could have asked him to explain. _She did._ She didn’t understand, but maybe she did ask. _What happened? Where did you go?_

He picks random turns, the sharper the better, and takes them as fast as he can. _You’re Ben Solo._ No, he’s not. If he crashes the bike there will be no one left to be Ben Solo, or Ren either. If it happens because he’s driving too fast, it’s not suicide, just an accident. He leans into the turn and leans on the throttle, and remembers the flutter of the corner of Rey’s rucked-up skirt over his knee, white and frantic, like a panicked dove.

 _What happened?_ she asked. _Where did you go?_ Nowhere. He’s never left this awful town, not for a second, no matter how far he’s gone. It will never let him go; it will keep him here and it will kill him.

No. He refuses. He won’t give them the satisfaction of burying him.

He stops the bike dead on the narrow shoulder of Calle Padre Serra and looks out at the sleeping city, speckled with absinthe-green street lights like track marks. He looks past it, to the sea, with the red and white lights of the oil platforms, and past them, to the shadows where the islands lurk. Rey had cried for the lone woman of the island. _Cry for Ben Solo, Rey. Cry for the boy I killed._

Maybe she would have. _What happened?_ Maybe he should have told her. Maybe she was crying. He stares out at the ocean. She’d cried for the woman of the island. _All her people had died._ She was crying. He’d made her cry.

He hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true.

He turns the bike downhill. The Mission is a hulking shadow in the dark; the smell of roses barely touches him as he races past.

* * *

“Yes,” Mrs. Solo says, and oh, Rey has heard this story. Has seen it unfold over and over. Friend turning on friend, for money and for land and to kick away the shame of being friends with one of _them._ “He took it, and he sold it. And he threw his weight in the state government into the first Alien Land Act, which made sure Japanese immigrants could never own land in California.” She’s sitting very straight in her chair. “It was very popular in Santa Teresa. People were afraid of the Japanese, and Anderson hardly discouraged that. And when it became evident that a number of people who had held leases, or owned property, would no longer be able to, it was very easy to buy out those leases and buy up that land, for very, very low prices. My birth-father made a number of purchases like that.”

“What happened to the people whose land it was? To Kenobi and the rest?”

“Ben Kenobi was very dear to my parents. My real parents, the Orreagas. They gave him a cottage down the road that belonged to them. When the orchard burned, he saved this house. He tried to save my parents.” There’s a catch in her voice. “He tried. Other people, other families… some of them went back to Japan. Some of them had children who were born in the States, and they were able to put the land in their children’s names. And meanwhile, my birth-mother… ”

Her voice drifts off, and her head turns away. “Yes?” Rey prompts.

“She was pregnant with twins when her husband signed the papers to commit her to the Camarillo State Mental Institution.”

* * *

“The thing is,” Hans says to Poe’s shoes, “he didn’t _tell_ me he’d figured it out. He didn’t even tell Leila. He kept it to himself, and he pulled further and further away from us. And I thought, oh, well, he’s sixteen. He’s growing up; he doesn’t need his old dad anymore. Christ, he must have _despised_ me.” His eyes turn back towards the house, where the light in the front parlor is still glowing. “So I just went on, raking in cash for Beckett — ”

“How does Beckett come into it?” If Mr. Solo’s in a mood to spill his secrets, Poe’s not above taking advantage.

Hans sighs. “He was distribution. Nando and I’d bring in the goods; Beckett would sell them on. If he’s got cash to spare these days, I’m bound to wonder if it doesn’t come from the old routes.”

“Not much of a black market these days, is there?”

“There’s always a black market for some things. In those days, alcohol was rationed. But the market’s up for dope these days, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to get in Mexico.” 

“You think Beckett’s distributing dope?”

“I’d lay any money he’s back under the table with something. He could make it work; he knows the right people. Even back then I started to have my suspicions about who was buying. I wasn’t the only person who had more cash than he should’ve, in those days. Krennick and Tarquin got pretty loaded buying land off excluded families, but they kept getting richer and richer. Krennick must have been selling the liquor, I think, and paying Tarquin to look the other way. But I didn’t ask. I kept myself from asking.”

“Did you have any… suspicion. That Krennick might be — that there might be something worse going on with Krennick than black-market booze?”

“Like what?” Mr. Solo asks sharply. “I know you told Leila that it was Krennick who fought with Ben in that fairy bar. What else did you tell her?”

Poe sets his teeth. “I told you, Mr. Solo; I can’t discuss that.”

“She’s my wife! If she’s involved in — ”

Now it’s Poe’s turn to sound sharp. “Involved in what?”

Hans stares at him, for a moment, and then turns his gaze back to his house, and the light where his wife must still be waiting. “Ben knew I was no good. But I guess with Luke gone, he thought — maybe he thought Leila needed me. God knows why.” Poe can hear him swallow. “It runs in their family, you know. Leila’s mother was locked up in the Camarillo hospital before she was even born. But you’ll never see it in her. Not for a second. She’s made of steel. I never even thought to look for it in Ben.”

* * *

“Maybe she was insane. Maybe not. She died in the institution not long after we were born. I don’t know how. I don’t know where she was buried, if she was buried. Maybe her body was given to science. They didn’t keep those records, in Camarillo in those days.”

She’s so calm. Rey wants to ask, _what did you do when you found out? Did you cry? Did you howl and rage at the unfairness, at the not knowing, at the way it doesn’t seem to matter to anybody but you?_ She stays quiet.

“Varder very quietly arranged for us to be put up for adoption; as far as he was concerned, we were only a burden. He’d allied himself to a number of wealthy men in this area — Krennick, Tarquin, all of those blue-blood Anglos. It didn’t take him long to get into the state senate, and from there he became the state attorney general, and founded the California Un-American Activities Committee. He controlled a great deal of real estate, and he was in the habit of offering it to people from whom he wanted favors. And when he didn’t get the favors he wanted, or when people condemned him… ” She raises one hand, gesturing out at what used to be an orchard, then drops it to smooth the fabric of her skirt around her knees. “He made sure there were consequences. He still had to run for office, but between what he did to people who spoke against him and the way he made himself out to be a big hero, saving the poor white farmer from the wicked Japanese invaders — as if he weren’t a vulture and a thief, taking honest men’s land — he didn’t have much trouble. But then, in ‘35, there was another fire.”

She glances at Rey, and then at Rose and Finn. “Were any of you here in ‘35?” Rey shakes her head, and Rose and Finn do the same. “There was an earthquake. That’s what started the fire. Ben — my Ben, my son — was six years old, and Han and I were trying to help people who were buried downtown when we saw the power line fall. The whole town could have gone up like kindling and killed everyone the quake had trapped if old Ben and my brother hadn’t stepped in to lead the fight. As it was, there was only one fatality, and it was Ben Kenobi. Luke almost died of smoke inhalation.”

She pauses for a moment. “Poe said he was a hero,” Rey says, to encourage the story.

“He was. In the war, too. But in ‘35, everyone in the county adored him. He was in the LA Times, on the front page. And then, suddenly, _for some reason,_ Varder was willing to acknowledge that he had children. Or a son, at least.” She snorts. “Daughters are always a bit incidental, I suppose.” Rey sees Rose nod sympathetically. “So he tried to use Luke to sell himself to the people. He and Krennick had a new law they were pushing, to keep Japanese parents from putting land in their children’s names. There was a particular plot Varder had his eye on, in Monte Vista. An olive orchard owned by a family called Mitaka.”

* * *

Of course Rey’s car isn’t in the motel lot when Ren skids in at Maisie’s. She’s gone to — do whatever she’ll do. What matters is that she won’t look for him here — not that she _would_ look for him; why would she _look_ for him when he’s made her cry — and he won’t have to sit somewhere in silence with his thoughts. He’s got quarters left for the juke, and money to leave for whatever he drinks.

He walks around to the kitchen window and tries it. Locked. He pulls off his leather jacket and drapes it over his face, then backs up, aiming his helmeted head at the glass pane.

He’s running when Maisie’s voice says, “Idiot boy. What are you up to?”

He stumbles, and crashes over the sill of the opened window and almost onto Maisie. His face burns; he tries to straighten up, half-in, half-out, and hits the window-sash with a grunt.

“We’re closed,” Maisie says dryly.

“I know,” he says, his voice thick as glue in his throat. He made her cry. “But I needed a drink.”

She examines him for a moment, as he blinks at her from under his coat and helmet like a crab. “Come through the door like a civilized person and I’ll see what I can do.”

* * *

Rey stares. _The sullen boy with the pretty girlfriend, the one who rode a German bike._ Mrs. Solo doesn’t notice. “He and Krennick got the law passed, and he got his olive orchard, and Krennick got into Congress. But Luke went in the papers and told everyone he thought Varder was a crook and a gangster and he was ashamed to be associated with him. Varder retired the next year, and died the year after that. All his land, he left to Luke. He left his oil holdings to me. I sold them as soon as I had the papers in my hand. I didn’t want anything from that man.”

“But Luke kept all that land?” Rey frowns. If he had enough conscience to denounce his own father in public, why would he hang on to his immoral earnings?

“Some of it he sold. I was raised by wealthy parents, in the Church. My brother was raised dirt-poor in Oxnard. And he developed some… unusual religious convictions. He believed he felt some kind of — ” she gestures airily, impatiently — “spiritual connection to the olive orchard and the river. In honesty, I think it was just the first time he’d had anything like money. And it was a place for him to follow his dream and open a school. So he kept that, and he kept our mother’s estate, Lotus Springs.”

Rose shifts abruptly in her seat. Rey turns towards her curiously, and Mrs. Solo makes an inquiring noise. Hesitantly, Rose asks. “Is that… is that the place in Monte Vista? With the big pond of red and white lotuses? I — you can see it from the back terrance of the Huxleys’ house.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Solo says, frowning. “That’s it. I’m afraid Luke doesn’t take any care of it; he won’t sell it, but he won’t live there, either. But I’d forgotten you work for the Huxleys, Rose. You know, it was Brandon Huxley who bought the oil holdings from me. I wonder if he saw the war coming?”

“Mr. Huxley is a man who knows how to plan.”

Rose’s tone is bleak. Rey remembers the black line on Beckett’s map. Mr. Huxley’s oil line, which used to be Mrs. Solo’s, which used to be Varder’s. On Mr. Skywalker’s land, which used to belong to the Mitakas. Everything shifts like sand in wind.

“I didn’t tell Ben… anything,” Leila says. “It was a mistake. I know that now. But I thought — Varder was dead. Maybe I didn’t think Luke should have kept the Olive Tree property, but that was his choice to make, wasn’t it? And I just — _I hate to think of it!”_ The cry is so sudden all of them, even Finn, jump. Rey stares, as Mrs. Solo goes on, her voice trembling. “My father _killed my parents._ He persecuted the innocent and he stole and he conspired and he laid down all the laws and precedents that evil men would use to do evil things for years and years; he gave his whole life to destroying people for gain, and I wanted nothing to do with it!”

“But you profited from it,” Rose says. “You and your brother.” It seems to slip out of her, sweet and earnest, and when she realizes what she’s said, her eyes go wide and she slides to the edge of her seat, as if she’s going to drop to her knees to ask forgiveness. Finn’s barely moved, but Rey can tell he’s gone stiff as a board.

Leila Solo looks down. The toe of her small slippered foot traces the line between tiles. “Yes. We did. And we should have told Ben. But he found out it out for himself.” She raises her head and looks around at the three of them, her expression shockingly close to pleading. “Everything just went so wrong.” Her fingers twine together, tighter and tighter in her lap. “He didn’t tell either of us. Han was absorbed by his stupid back-alley scheme. And I suppose Ben didn’t trust me. Why should he? He kept it to himself. And he waited. He waited for Luke to come home.”

**…**

“Of course he’d tell Luke and not us,” Hans say, miserable. “Luke was the hero. The real hero. I was the fraud. But he’d been nursing it for so long — it must have turned his brain.”

**…**

“Luke came to us. He’d only been back at the school a week. And Ben had gone to him, after school, and spilled out every awful thing he knew about us. Only — only Luke said he — he didn’t make any sense about it. He mixed it all up with — with wild stories.”

**…**

“Luke tells me my boy’s in his office after school, raving and weeping and staring at nothing like a lunatic? Ben was always emotional, but I just didn’t believe it. Especially since Luke — he said — he said Ben kept talking about — being a homosexual — and I thought — I thought my son wouldn’t — ”

**…**

“And I begged Han not to but of course he marched right to Ben’s room to confront him about it, and he — he picked up a book and started beating Han with it. They were nearly the same height by then. Han fell but Ben just kept screaming.”

**…**

“He tried to fight me. It was about the money. He said it was all dirty. It was all stolen. He said we weren’t any better than Krennick. Making money off war and fear. He meant me; how I was in bed with Krennick and pretending not to know it.”

**…**

“He said it was our fault as much as Krennick’s that they dragged the Japanese families out of Santa Teresa, interned them at the Santa Anita track so they had to live in the barns like animals. He meant us, the Skywalkers; Krennick fought for the internment, but he did it all with precedents Varder laid down.”

**…**

“Luke said he seemed off but I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t believe how much it hurt him, what I’d done.”

**…**

“He said we were safe and wealthy while other people suffered, and we never noticed.”

**…**

“He kept going for me, yelling. ‘You don’t know because you don’t want to know.’”

**…**

_“‘You don’t know because you don’t want to know.’”_

* * *

He comes through the door like Maisie asks, but his heart hurts; his heart hurts so badly, and his hands need to hurt something, and his ears need to hear something break; he reaches over the bar, snatches up the closest bottle, and hurls it to the floor. It smashes into a thousand brilliant shards with a sound like a shot, and the smell of liquor burns the air.

* * *

Rey draws a difficult breath. They’re all staring at Leila Solo, and she stares off into nothing. Rey tries to make her heart slow. It won’t slow. It races and races.

“Luke,” Mrs. Solo says at last. “Luke said he was insane. He’d been driven insane. Like our mother. And he needed to be treated.”

“Treated,” Rey echoes.

“We sent him away,” Leila whispers. “The doctors gave him tests; they said he had — they said, delusions of homosexuality. That he was — normal — towards women, but he had homosexual fantasies. They treated him. He used to write to me every day. Because he knew I hadn’t wanted to.”

“Hadn’t wanted to send him away?”

“He was so angry. And it was frightening. But Luke and Han insisted. They told him the doctors might treat him with an electric shock. He was so scared of it, that they might do it to him. It was in all his letters.”

 _Lightning,_ Rey thinks. Misspelled in every letter. _Lightening._

* * *

“What’d you do that for?” Maisie cries.

“I had to,” he says. He doesn’t know how else to say it. “I’ll pay for it. I just had to.”

She looks up into his face from behind her big coke-bottle glasses. “All right,” she says. “All right. What’ll it be, Ben?”

“Saké,” he says, and he doesn’t correct her until he’s drunk what she’s poured.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Kinsey Report** — _Sexual Behavior in the Human Male,_ published 1948.  
>  **Guayabera** — A [dress shirt with fine pleats in stripes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guayabera), also known in the Southwest as the “dad at a party” shirt.  
>  **Chị** — (Vietnamese) Older sister. You may notice that Rose doesn’t use Paige’s actual given name, Bê. Some Vietnamese cultures have intra-family naming taboos of various strengths; Rose calling her sister by her name would be kind of like an American child calling their parent by their first name.  
>  **Serape** — A real serape is not to be confused with a poncho! It’s a long shawl worn as a very dashing cloak or cape, [like so.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serape#/media/File:Mexican_Serape.jpg)
> 
> “Conditioning and Extinction and Their Relation to Drive” and _The Behavior of Organisms_ are both works of behaviorist psychology by B.F. Skinner.
> 
> The fitted tunic Finn remembers from the picture is an áo dài; you can see Tran Loan and Ngo Thanh Van (who plays Paige) wearing áo dài to promote The Last Jedi [here](https://saigoneer.com/saigon-arts-culture/arts-culture-categories/11988-meet-kelly-marie-tran,-the-asian-hero-of-star-wars-the-last-jedi)
> 
> The [legal bars to Asian, and specifically Japanese, land ownership in California](http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Alien_land_laws/) are all historical. Varder’s career, including membership in HUAC’s equally awful younger sibling, [CUAC,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Senate_Factfinding_Subcommittee_on_Un-American_Activities) personal enrichment from the displacement of Japanese-American families, and attempting to leverage other people’s heroism, is based on a California politician named Clarence Ward. The highway out to UCSB bears his name to this day.
> 
> [Santa Anita Race Track was used to house Japanese-American families](https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Santa_Anita_\(detention_facility\)/) during WWII, after [Executive Order 9066](https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Executive%20Order%209066/) forcibly moved every Japanese American on the West Coast. Internees were employed to make military camouflage nets. It was eventually evacuated, with interned people being sent to longer-term camps.
> 
> I'm being a little elastic with history — the [Camarillo State Mental Hospital](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camarillo_State_Mental_Hospital) didn't receive patients until 1932. I have merged it with the Patton State Hospital in San Bernadino, where [2,024 patients were buried on the hospital grounds in unmarked graves.](https://web.archive.org/web/20140202103801/http://www.dsh.ca.gov/Hospitals/CMP_FactSheet.asp) Through the 1960s, electroconvulsive therapy was used without patient consent, without anesthetic or muscle-relaxants, and often without explanation, in front of other patients. So Ben would have seen his fellow patients being held down in their beds and shocked, and have no idea whether it might happen to him, because no warning was ever given, for fear patients would run away.
> 
> "Lotus" in Sanskrit is "padma;" in Japanese it's "ren." The lotus is the national flower of Vietnam, its growth from muddy water symbolizing beauty and virtue growing from adversity.


	11. La Servante Indochinoise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Now,” Maisie says gently, _“I_ always thought Ben was pretty all-right. So why’d you want to go and do a thing like that?” 
> 
> “He was… weak. He didn’t fight.” 
> 
> “From what I hear, he fought quite a lot.” 
> 
> “Not at the right time. Not when it mattered.” He tries to drink from his empty glass. As if his will to drown could conjure up something to drown him. 
> 
> “When was the right time?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Content warning,** for racism, sexism, homophobia, a brief mention of suicide, a brief mention of the physical abuse of a child, ugly power dynamics in a one-sided romantic relationship, another mention of ECT, and a non-graphic discussion of the sexual and emotional abuse of a teenager by an authority figure. If you would like to read most of the chapter and skip those last two things, please skip down to the end of the end-notes for instructions on where to stop and re-start reading, and a summary.

The front door opens. Rey turns — they all turn — to see Han standing in the doorway, his arm against the frame and his head against his arm. Poe is pulling his own arm back; the two of them must have been standing there for some time before Poe reached around him to open the door.

Hans seems afraid to look at his wife, but once he has, he can’t seem to look away. She looks back, her dark eyes knowing and sorrowful. She stands up. “Come in before you let in a chill,” she says, the warm wind stirring her skirts. He ducks, shaking his head, and obeys.

Once he’s safely over the threshold, Leila turns to Rey. “If you see my son again,” she says in a low voice. “Please tell him. That I’m sorry.”

Rey watches the two of them walk up the stairs, Leila’s hand clasped firmly in Han’s, and wonders if she will see him again.

As Finn and Poe argue about who should sleep where, she wonders a lot of things about Mrs. Solo’s son.

 _They hospitalized him. But he came back; he went to college. He was set to graduate in ‘51._ She does some quick math — he would have had to start in the fall of ‘47. If Luke was part of the general release of POWs, he came back in late ‘45. So however Ben was treated, they called it a success. _He came back, went to college, got expelled, and_ then _he ran away and changed his name. Was it the fight in the bar? But he came home first —_

She’s startled out of her thoughts when she hears Rose say, “Miss Jaffa can share with me, if she doesn’t mind.”

Oh. Right. It’s still hours to sunrise, guest beds are short, and though of course Poe and Finn _can_ share a bed, she’d rather not make them. She agrees hastily to bunk with Rose.

It’s only when she actually climbs in that she realizes how she must reek of sex and sweat. “I’m sorry to make you share with me,” she says apologetically.

“It’s all right,” Rose says. “I know how strange American men are about sharing a bed.”

“Right.” _Strange. That’s one way of putting how it is between Finn and Poe._

The bed is a decent size; Rose at least doesn’t have to sleep pushed right up against her. Rey tucks her hands under her head and discovers how strongly they still smell like Ren. Ben. Not just male sweat, but his own particular smell of savory spices and hot metal. She shivers. Her eyes sting.

“Who is it?” Rose asks softly. “Their son?”

There’s no hiding it from Rose, then, even if Mrs. Solo was too sewn up with the past to notice that her detective had gone out with stockings and come back bare-legged. “Yes.”

“You’re afraid for him? Or of him?”

She should be. One or the other. Maybe both. Both, yes; both are true, but what she says, somehow, in a small voice like a child’s whimper, is: “He said my parents were dead.”

“Do you believe him?”

That’s the terrible thing. That’s what frightens her most. “Yes.” Hasn’t everything told her? Every list from IRO or HIAS or the Joint or MALBEN without their names, every three-inch news item on page 34 headed _Polish Jews Decimated,_ that leaves her with the cruel arithmetic of three million six hundred thousand in Poland before the war minus three million murdered and minus two hundred and fifty thousand fled abroad, and then plus one hundred thousand returned, and then minus another thousand killed again and minus _they must have spent all they had to send me away,_ and then plus _they were clever; they were resourceful_ and minus _they would know I was waiting and looking_ minus _nine years since liberation_ minus _they only told me that they would come for me so that I would go; they knew they’d never come; they knew I would live and they would die._

She should have added it up. The numbers and the facts and the gentle silences from Finn and Poe. The memory of her mother’s hands over her face, her father’s tears, putting her in the taxi. _Be good, Malkele._ But it was Ben Solo she believed, shouting at her in a dark motel.

“They must have been dead for years,” she says wretchedly. “Years and years.” She can’t think, or she’ll think of the pictures in the newspapers. She looks at Rose. “Your sister — was she — she was all the people you had here? In this country?” Rose nods. In the little light, Rey can see that her eyes are closed tightly. Like Rey, she is trying to keep something out. Rey lays her hand over Rose’s clenched fist. She hopes it’s soothing and not presumptuous. “She would be proud of you, I’m sure. To come out here looking for her. To make sure they’re doing right by her.” 

“She was a — she was very brave,” Rose says, with difficulty. “She was always very brave. And I thought we would be brave together, like the Trưng Sisters, that she would be there to help me when I was bad at it myself. But she’s not.” She takes her fist from under Rey’s hand and dashes at her eyes with it.

“Finn will help you. He’ll find out who did it.”

“He’s working for Armand, and _he_ doesn’t care who killed her; he only wants his papers back.”

“Finn cares. He may not say so, but he does. He was there when she died, you know. He held her.” Rose doesn’t say anything. “I don’t know if that helps. To know that she had someone kind with her when she died.”

The night air is finally beginning to cool. Rey can hear a cricket, out in the orange trees. “Maybe it helps,” Rose says. “I only — I just — ” And then she rolls her face into her pillow, crying out in a language Rey doesn’t understand, sobs bubbling up.

Helplessly, Rey touches her hair, and replies in a language she knows Rose doesn’t know. “Zichronah livracha,” she murmurs. _May her memory be for a blessing._ She repeats it, crooning, feeling Rose shaking with tears. “<A blessing, a blessing; may her memory be for a blessing.>”

 _Here we are,_ Rey thinks, _strangers in a strange land, crying in languages no one can understand, for people no one can give back to us._ Gently, she pulls Rose to her, gently holds her close, and tries to say it in English. “You’ll remember her. You’ll do good, remembering her.” _We must be good,_ she thinks. _We must be good to one another._

“Yes,” Rose says, after a moment. “Yes. I will.”

* * *

Maisie won’t let him play anything on the jukebox. When he tries to feed it a quarter on the sly, she unplugs it. “You almost broke my window. Now you’re going to get me complaints from the neighbors? Think again.”

“I made her cry,” he explains again. “She asked me what happened, and I made her cry, and I thought maybe she’d try to follow me but she didn’t.”

“Yes, you mentioned.”

“Also I stole her stockings,” he admits.

Maisie slides her glasses down her nose and looks at him over the tops. “I don’t think I want to know.”

It was an impulse. A mean one, to take something from her. He reaches into his pocket and gathers the nylon in his palm. They probably smell like Rey. _It’s not really paraphilia. Not if you’d rather have the girl, and all you’ve got left is the stockings._

He’s used to being a degenerate. It’s a bit like being a regular criminal, except that regular criminals don’t trust each other. All the men in the code bars, asking at the bookstore for the art and health magazines, are your comrades.

“Not the same as having somebody who looks out for you, though.” He arrived at the saying-it-out-loud stage about a glass back.

“There, there,” Maisie says. “She was a pretty girl. But it’s a bit soon to be so stuck on her, isn’t it?”

She’s trying to be kind. He knows. “She said I was her friend,” he tells the wet spot on the bar. “Name’s Reina, right? Reina de los angeles. But she said she was Rey to her friends.” He runs his thumb through the condensation on his glass. “And I should call her Rey.”

Maisie sighs out, long and slow. He pulls the glass close and looks down into it. He’s not her friend; he’s a sick, broken brute, and he made her cry. “I didn’t tell her anything that wasn’t true,” he mumbles, as if that made it better.

“Is that so? Because I’m pretty sure the first time you told me this story, you said you told her you weren’t Ben Solo.”

“I’m _Ren,”_ he says, stamping the glass on the bar. 

“Sure,” Maisie says patiently, “but it’s not true that you killed Ben Solo.”

“From a certain point of view — ” he begins, but she cuts him off.

“Do _not_ try Ben Kenobi’s lines on me if you want to disown his name.”

He slams the glass against the bar again. The last drops of saké jump, and he sucks them angrily off his knuckles, glaring at her. 

“Maybe Ben Solo changed,” Maisie says. “Maybe that’s not his name. But dead boys don’t drink this much rice wine.”

“Cut his throat. Threw him in the river.”

“Did you?”

He stares blurrily down at the bar, at the messy wet circles his glass has left. “I meant to. But they took away my razor when they locked me up. When I got back the river was dry.”

“Now,” Maisie says gently, _“I_ always thought Ben was pretty all-right. So why’d you want to go and do a thing like that to him?”

“He was… weak. He didn’t fight.”

“From what I hear, he fought quite a lot.”

“Not at the right time. Not when it mattered.” He tries to drink from his empty glass. As if his will to drown could conjure up something to drown him.

“When was the right time?”

But he can’t tell her that. He has a bottle in him, but it’s only saké, and even if it were something stronger, he’s not sure he could. He holds out the glass and waits. When Maisie slowly opens a new bottle and slowly pours him another three fingers, he drinks slowly, and then tries to feed the juke a quarter again before he remembers it’s unplugged. He sits back down at the bar and sings to himself, softly:

_I would sacrifice anything, come what might_  
_For the sake of having you near_  
_In spite of the warning voice that comes in the night_  
_And repeats, how it yells in my ear:_

_Don’t you know, you fool?_  
_You never can win_  
_Use your mentality_  
_Wake up to reality._

He twists his glass and watches the liquor swirl inside it, a spinning circle like a dancing woman’s skirt.

_But each time I do_  
_Just the thought of you_  
_Makes me stop before I begin_  
_’Cause I’ve got you_  
_Under my skin._

* * *

The morning sun is grey when Finn wakes up, and the tiles are cold under his bare feet. Yesterday, Arturo had handed him eggs and beans on a tortilla; today, when he dresses and walks into the kitchen, he finds Rey eating a crêpe with a knife, a fork, and great enthusiasm, as Rose frowns down into the pan.

“We ate these in Poland,” Rey is saying. “With sour cream and jam. It was a _treat._ Your bosses eat this all the time?”

Finn pauses, startled. Rey never talks about Poland. Not in English.

“She likes them every morning. He likes eggs and toast but he doesn’t like American bread. Do you want a crêpe, Finn?”

“Han and Arturo got Poe up at dawn to ride; Mrs. Solo said she wasn’t hungry, and Pío had _four,”_ Rey tells him. “He said they were as close to genuine as you could get without a crêpe pan.”

Finn accepts a crêpe. Rey talks to Rose in a eager, shy way Finn hasn’t seen since she decided they could trust Poe, but she doesn’t mention Poland again, or her parents. Poe’d whispered to him last night that she’d told him they were dead; Finn had nodded, listening but skeptical. Now he wonders. 

_(“ <I have to go back down to the docks at Jaffa,>” she said to him in Arabic, her voice scratchy with the dust of the streets. “<My parents sent me ahead, but they’re coming too. They must be in hiding; it’s harder for them to be smuggled out, and they’ll be completely lost when they get here.>” He didn’t know the word she used, _<smuggled;> _he nodded anyway.)_

Rey excuses herself, thanking Rose, and Rose turns to the dishes. Finn goes to the phone and calls the answering service again, mostly for something to do while Rose washes dishes. It’s almost eight hours to close of business today, Huxley’s deadline. Rose seems to think there’s some international conspiracy here, to bring French cigarettes to a Californian ranch. He’s less sure. This town probably has at least one fancy tobacconist — 

“Yes, two calls since last night,” Miss Connors says, and he jumps. “One was on the night shift, around 4AM. The notes say it was a man; he said, ‘Oh, forget it,’ and hung up. Miss Kahn made a note that she believes the caller was drunk. The other was just now, it was for you. 9:12AM. Quote: ‘This is Armand Huxley calling. Please tell;’ interruption, unintelligible; quote resumes: ‘please tell Askari never mind about the blueprints, and just to let me know about Rose.’”

“Never mind about the blueprints?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Thanks, Miss Connors; you’re invaluable.”

“I know,” Miss Connors says, a bit coquettishly, and hangs up.

He leans in the doorway, watching Rose industriously scrubbing things dry and biting his lip. She sees him, and puts down the last plate, still wet. “What is it?”

“Huxley called my answering service. He said ‘never mind about the blueprints.’ That sounds to me like… ”

“Like he already has them,” she finishes, her voice dropping. She closes her eyes, but he sees them move behind her lids like a dreamer’s, and when they open they’re fixed on nothing.

“He still wants to know about you. What do you want me to tell him?” He tries to think of a way to say, _will you tell me where you’re going to go now?_ He settles on: “Is there anywhere I can drop you?”

“Yes,” she says, eyes still steady, her small mouth set. “Take me back to the Huxleys, please.”

* * *

_I owe the Solos one._ He’d said that; Rey remembers it clearly, especially since Han had questioned her. _So they’re monsters, but he owes them one?_ They’d committed him to a hospital where he’d been terrified of shock treatment, but he’d come back, and gone to college. Is that what he owes them for, his education?

“Of course that map is quite antique,” Pío says. “Here, this one is more recent — 1922, I believe. But do be careful with it, won’t you? I’m sure Mrs. Solo would never forgive me if any of her late parents’ documents were to be damaged.”

“Yes, of course, but, Mr. Modales, I asked if you had any with the names of the beaches on them. And the streets. I really just want a recent street map. From _this_ decade.”

“From _this_ decade? The nineteen- _fifties?”_ He sounds unsure, turning hesitantly back and forth between her spot at the desk by the window and the cool darkness of the shelves. “I really think you might try the boot of Mr. Solo’s automobile for something of that nature.”

“Right.” She gets to her feet. Out the window, she sees Poe hurtling around the ring on a horse — not Blue Hammer; she must be resting somewhere. Arturo rides beside him, crowding him close. They’re much too far for Rey to hear them through the window, but she can tell they’re shouting at one another. Beside her, Pío huffs.

“That man and his horses. It’s Mr. Solo’s chosen profession, of course, but — ” He falls silent, blinking slowly out across the fields. When he speaks again, he’s quieter. “You mustn’t think I listen at doors, Miss Jaffa; it’s only that I came up the stairs rather early this morning, and — is it true, about Master Ben?”

Rey doesn’t know what he’s heard, but the limits of client confidentiality can be a bit blurry sometimes, and the poor old man looks so worried. “Ben Solo’s alive, yes.”

“Well.” His voice is full of wonder, but also, Rey thinks, sadness. “Well. Alive, but doesn’t care to visit his poor parents. I see.”

“You were here in the house in ‘45?” Rey asks. “When he was…?”

“Unwell? Yes. Poor boy. His breakdown — all that shouting.” He gives a small shudder. “And of course hitting Mr. Solo. With a book! He used to be a great reader, you know. The volume was very securely-bound, fortunately.”

Rey lets that go. “But he seemed better when he came back from the… hospital?”

“Better? Well, there weren’t any — _explosions_ of that type anymore. But it didn’t seem to do much for the — ” 

He makes a vague sort of gesture in front of his face, and Rey repeats it, frowning. “The what? Eyes?”

“Yes. Well. After a fashion.” Pío wrings his hands. “Perhaps I ought not to go into so much detail. The poor thing. But he’d been prone to it for several months, you know, before he was… hospitalized. Just stopping in the middle of everything and sort of — _not being there,_ you know. Behind his eyes. I found it rather unnerving, personally. But of course it wasn’t my place to ask too many questions. And he always said he was only tired. Perhaps he was. He gave up riding rather abruptly, you know; I do hear lack of exercise may invite exhaustion and mental distress.”

Rey looks out the window again, to where Poe is bent low over his horse’s neck.

* * *

The streets of Monte Vista are green with oleander hedges and low palms, and fragrant with eucalyptus. Finn frowns as he drives; most of the houses aren’t visible from the street, but the gates which guard the driveways are a funny mix, English cobblestone pillars on one, Italian sandstone on another, rustic wood on a third. Each estate seems to live in its own dream, ignoring its neighbors. Finn finds it strange, to sit on the most beautiful, expensive real estate in California and build a house that pretends it’s somewhere else.

“That one,” Rose says, pointing. The gate is chrome, modern and shining. And topped, Finn is unnerved to see, by a tight coil of barbed wire. He stops the car.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” He feels like he’s returning her to prison. Or a POW camp.

“Yes,” she says. There’s a steely hiss in her voice, a knife against a whetstone. “I’m sure.”

“Rose. You don’t have to.”

She swallows. “I do.”

He takes a deep breath, turns the car to the gate, and rings the bell.

The gate’s unlocked, and house is visible, when he drives through. From the gate, Finn had expected something sleek, something atomic. What he sees is two stories of pure white plaster perched on a low hill, french doors with blue shutters, deep gables. It’s a house for another climate, built in dry Mediterranean heat. Huxley himself comes striding out of the house, slick red hair shining coppery in the sun. When Rose climbs out of the passenger side, he breaks into a run. He snatches her up, holding her pressed tight, like a child who doesn’t realize he’s smothering his kitten. “Rose,” he says brokenly. “Rose. You came back to me.”

Rose doesn’t answer. She’s limp in his arms. Huxley doesn’t seem to notice. Finn averts his eyes. It’s the decent, professional thing to do, but that’s not why he does it. He does it because it makes his stomach turn to watch. Huxley holding her so tight, and Rose just hanging there. It makes his blood burn.

The door squeaks, and someone else comes out over the manicured lawn. Her feet crunch on the gravel drive, and Huxley drops Rose with a guilty look as the tall woman from the photograph crosses to him. “Ah,” she says with chilly disdain, “la servante Indochinoise.”

“Madame,” Rose says, and curtseys. Her eyes are fixed on the ground. Finn feels his teeth grind.

He sees why Rose would call Mrs. Huxley la phasme; there’s something insect-like in her pitiless gaze. “<So necessary,>” she says, looking across at her husband, “<an Indochinese domestic in America. We’ve been quite lost without her. Or rather, _you_ have been quite lost without her, haven’t you.>”

“<I will of course pay you as agreed,>” Huxley says to Finn, flicking his eyes sideways at his wife. Is she’s discomfited to learn Finn speaks French, she doesn’t show it. “<Seventy-five dollars, I think?>”

“<One hundred and twelve, and fifty cents,>” Finn says, fighting not to clench his teeth. “<Plus five for gas and bus fares, and twenty for a ruined suit.>” He’s not going to spit _her sister’s dead, you bastards_ at these two, but if they ask how he ruined the suit he’s more than happy to tell them. _Someone shot her sister in the throat, and I held her in her blood._

“<One hundred and forty dollars,>” Mrs. Huxley says. “<One hundred and forty dollars for a black man to bring you back your dirty little maid.>”

“<I trust that by the time my father gets here, you’ll have remembered yourself enough to refrain from the vulgarity of fighting in front of the help,>” her husband retorts. La phasme curls her lip.

“One hundred and thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents,” Finn says in his coldest Etonian tones. Rose looks at him sideways, and he thinks he might see a faint hint of a smile touch her lips before she looks back down at her shoes. 

Mr. Huxley writes him a check; it seems to Finn that sweat glistens on the back of his neck. Finn looks at the perfect lawn, at the house on its hill, which must have been built to specification, and the tidy, geometrical gardens of lavender, flowering lime trees, and boxwood which encircle it, looking out over the neighborhood to the distant sea, and remembers the oil line that crosses Luke Skywalker’s land. _I should have charged him more for my suit._

“<Why are you still standing here?>” Mrs. Huxley snaps at Rose. “<We don’t pay you so much to stand here.>” Finn, watching Rose hurry across the lawn in her shabby dress and worn shoes, wonders how much, exactly, they do pay.

He takes the check with a bow, removing his hat. “<I’ll manage the gate.>” Mrs. Huxley is already walking back to the house; Mr. Huxley nods curtly, turning away.

Finn does close the gate, but he takes a moment to press an oleander leaf, long and tough, into the latch. He does start the Chevy, and drive it away, but only far enough to let the sound of the engine die away. He brakes in the shadow behind a hibiscus bush, and stares at his own hands on the wheel. His case is over. He’s been paid. He should go back to Rey and Poe and see if the Solos won’t hire him, too. There’s still that note, the threat of arson, the question of what the prodigal son thinks he’s doing with the Japanese mob. Plenty of work for a detective.

He turns off the car, puts on the parking break, and waits.

* * *

Sparrowhawk is Blackbird’s nephew, and he’s giving Poe grief. “<He’s just _slow! >”_ he cries to Arturo. “<It’s not my fault!>”

“<He could be faster,>” Arturo says, practically at his elbow on Robin’s Egg. “<Make him faster.>”

He tries. Sparrowhawk sidles away off course, and Poe curses. Then he sees the toe of Arturo’s boot, pressed against Sparrowhawk’s ribs. “Hey!”

“<Don’t yell; do something about it.>”

Fine. Poe lashes out with his own foot, kicking back and up. Arturo’s foot comes off, but then settles right back where it was, pushing him sideways. Poe snarls, and moves one hand from the reins to Sparrowhawk’s mane. He swings his far foot quickly out of the stirrup, up and over, clinging to his horse only by the mane and one foot, and with his free foot kicks first Arturo and then Robin’s Egg, right under the elbow. The horse staggers, and Poe swings himself flat along Sparrowhawk’s neck, breaking away at last.

“<You — showboat!>” Arturo sputters.

“Don’t knock what works, buddy!” Poe calls cheekily over his shoulder, slipping back into the second stirrup. It’s been so long since he’s done this, felt this — more than pleasure in his own skill, the exhilaration of the action itself. When he looks between the horse’s ears again, he sees Rey slip through the gate. Still giddy, he calls out to her: “Hey darlin’! Run away!”

She’s startled, but when she sees his smile, her face breaks open in a grin, and she takes off running. He hurries Sparrowhawk after her, and as the horse’s forelegs come even with Rey, he leans down and wraps his arm around her waist. She springs lightly into his arms, and he perches her on the pommel of his saddle like a rescued damsel.

“What’s a pretty girl like you doing out here?” he asks, ignoring Arturo’s cries of outrage. Rey’s heavier now that she was in Mandatory Palestine, a half-starved desert hunter, but she’s still light; Sparrowhawk can take it.

“Looking to borrow your car,” Rey says, still smiling. “Finn’s got the Chevy.”

“Sparrowhawk,” he says, pulling a long face, even as leans on the horse to go faster, “she only loves me for my car.”

“And I want to know what you found out about Ben Solo.”

That pulls him up short, and the horse feels how he tenses and pulls up too. “<Get off the horse if you’re going to stop riding, you idiot,>” Arturo growls. “<We get it; you’ve got fancy moves.>”

“<That’s not even the half of it,>” Rey says gaily, as she slides down to the ground. Poe jumps down beside her. “<I’ve seen him do this thing — >” She mimes leaning back and to the side, and firing a pistol.

“<I can do a few tricks,>” he admits modestly. “But tell me what you want to know.”

“Tell me about Orson Krennick,” she says.

At the name, Arturo expresses several opinions which Poe really hopes Rey doesn’t have the vocabulary to understand. By the look on her face, though, she has some idea.

“Let’s get some water,” he says. He’s sure Arturo has some ideas about how Poe conducts his life — Arturo, who has been friends with Pío for so long, who has a niece but never any wife — but he’s not sure whose secrets he wants to air in front of who. And he really is parched.

He tells her as they walk. As he leans over the spigot, scooping sun-warm water into his mouth, Rey frowns. “So maybe he attacked him because he was involved in the black market with his father and Beckett. Or maybe it was because he used Varder’s laws to dispossess the Japanese. Do you know if Ben knew Donny Mitaka before they put him away?” Poe shrugs, still drinking. “And maybe it was because he knew Krennick was, what, killing young men? Holding them captive?”

Poe turns off the tap. “I mean, in theory he might have been buying them off. Lots of cash and a bus ticket for a promise not to tell.”

“Do you think so?”

“No.” He runs his wet hands through his hair. “I don’t. But it sure sounds like Ben had a lot of reasons to have Krennick in his bad books.”

“It’s a bit sad,” Rey says thoughtfully, “that the way Mr. Solo tells it, he drove his son mad by being a criminal, and the way Mrs. Solo tells it, _she_ drove her son mad by keeping quiet and taking a dirty inheritance from her father.”

“I don’t think it was that Han was a criminal,” Poe protests, feeling stupidly driven to defend the story as he heard it. “It’s that he claimed he was a spy, and he lied.”

“It does hurt. To be lied to. But something’s missing. There must have been something else.”

* * *

Finn waits for half an hour, and all that time his heart doesn’t slow, no matter how calmly he tries to breathe. He just keeps seeing Huxley’s arms pressed into Rose’s unresisting flesh. Rose looking at her shoes. _Your dirty little maid._

After half an hour, a car passes the bush he’s parked behind, and Finn sees the flash of red hair by the driver’s ear, below his grey hat. He counts out a minute, then slips out of the car and back down the road to the gate. The leaf is still wedged in the latch; he pulls gently, and the gate slips open. He slips through.

The gravel is noisy but the grass is so perfect he’s afraid of leaving footprints. He walks carefully and quickly along the thin line of stone that separates the two until he can find cover in the garden, between the arms of a kaffir lime tree. From here he can see the back terrace, but what he’s looking for is a kitchen door. He spots it, low, facing neither the street nor the sea, framed by garbage pails and a spray of vivid red bougainvillea, cheerful and bright against the white plaster.

He’s making for it, staying in the shadows, when he hears the raised voice. The shutters may be closed but the windows aren’t. He changes course, heading for the wall below the voice. He can hear it better now. “<Little slut,>” Mrs. Huxley snarls, and Finn walks faster, less carefully, and then another noise stops him dead in his tracks. From the same window, the sharp, percussive sound of a slap. Then another. Then a third.

He can’t just run into the house. He can’t. 

He wants to.

Instead he makes for the kitchen door again. In the shade of the climbing bougainvillea, he looks down at his hands. They’ve clenched themselves into fists.

Finally, he hears quiet steps in the kitchen, the little clunks and scrapes of work being done. Gently, he opens the door. Rose is peeling carrots, looking blankly down. If he surprises her, she might cut herself; he knocks softly. Rose looks up, dropping the peeler, her face open and baffled when she sees him. There are red marks on her face. He raises his hand to his own face, tracing on his own skin.

“I can bring Rey out here,” he says. “If you want to press charges for assault. The police will believe a white woman.”

She looks down again, shaking her head. “No. I have to stay here.”

“Because you want those plans.” She doesn’t answer. He steps closer. “Rose. Listen. Huxley’s not my client anymore.”

She swallows. “I know.”

“I have to keep my client’s secrets. Unless it actively endangers somebody, anything I find out from someone who hires me is between me and them. Do you understand what I’m telling you?” She looks up, frowning, and he takes another step closer. “Hire me, Rose. Hire me to find out who killed your sister.”

Her eyes are wide. “I can’t afford — ”

“I have a sliding scale.”

“How much?”

Without taking his eyes off hers, he reaches into his back pocket and takes out the soft little purse Huxley gave him. He shakes it, gathering the change into his palm, counting the coins with his thumb. “Seventy-three cents. For a week.” He presses the purse into her open hand. “Tell me your secrets, Rose.”

* * *

Rey consults the map again, then turns off the 101. She’s about a mile short of Olive Tree School, but that’s not where she’s going. She passes fine Monte Vista houses, palm trees, live oaks, the grand white-washed hotel where she’d lied to Beckett she was staying. The buildings melt back, and the road is bare, the ground beside it sloping down to the sand. She checks the map again to be sure: Mariposa Beach.

She could be proud of herself, of her savvy guess, when she sees the Black Knight parked and pulls Poe’s car in beside it. All she feels is her heart hammering as she steps out of the driver’s side. In her rush to get to the Solos, she hadn’t been able to find her stockings in the dark motel room; the switchblade is clipped inside the arm of her dress, pressing against her breast. The silver clip shines unobtrusively among the white pleats of the bodice.

She finds him 20 yards away, underneath a cypress tree, where the fine dusty earth of the shore gives way to yellow sand, with his helmet beside him and his glasses off. The devil’s grass he’s sitting on can grow anywhere and does, snaking indifferently over the roots of the tree.

When she stops ten feet from him, he finally looks up at her, and then back out to sea. “Just you?”

“Only me.”

“I didn’t think you’d come looking for me now. Not yourself.” She can hardly hear him over the surf. “I made you cry.”

Never mind about her. And there’s no point in beating about the bush; either he’ll tell her or he won’t. “When you left your parents’ house. Three years ago. You took your father’s service pistol. If you were going to kill yourself, you’d have done it in the house; you wouldn’t have spared their feelings. Would you? So you didn’t take it to kill yourself.”

The waves crash and pull back, and the gulls screech and squabble. He doesn’t answer.

“Were you going to shoot Krennick?”

He shakes his head. 

“Who, then?”

“He was already dead. Nobody told me.”

“Who was?”

There’s another silence. “Stephen Palatine,” he says at last.

Rey is taken aback. “Who’s he? Why did you want to shoot him?”

Ren, who is also Ben — she can see them both, now, in his face, the furious man and the frightened boy — takes a deep breath. “My grandfather was Lorde Varder. Like the highway.”

“Your mother told me. Last night. I told your parents you were alive, that I’d seen you. I had to.” She doesn’t need to justify herself to him. Not for that. “Your parents blamed each other. For your running away. For you calling them monsters.”

“They are. Monsters.” His voice is so certain. Too certain; rigid with willful faith. She knows that sound; she recognizes it from her own voice.

“Then your father said it was because he’d lied to you, that that had given you a breakdown.” His thick fingers dig into the tough grass and clench. “And your mother said it was because of Varder, because of everything he’d done and everything he’d stolen, how they hadn’t told you. They just took the money. The land. From your friend’s family.”

“It was Donny’s,” he says. “The deed was in his name. Because it couldn’t be in his father’s. Varder made sure of that.” His face is contorted by contempt. “Then he took it from Donny, too.”

“And she said Krennick had profited too, from what Varder had done. And from your father’s smuggling.”

“This town. This rotten fucking town. The monsters have always run it. From the Spanish on down.” The wind is coming obliquely off the sea. Rey shivers.

“Your mother says she’s sorry.”

“Maybe she is.” He’s colder than the wind.

“Tell me who Palatine is, then,” she demands.

He folds in a little on himself, raising his knees. His shoulders hunch. “My grandfather stole Donny’s orchard. And then he died, and he left it to my Uncle Luke. And he started his school there. And my parents sent me, of course. Wouldn’t want to insult Uncle Luke and his weird sun-cult fake Buddhist shit. Only then there’s a war. And Uncle Luke, he and Dad are such great big heroes, off they go. And Uncle Luke, he’s mixed the curriculum up so much I can’t just go to a regular school. So he finds a _distinguished citizen_ to run his school for him.”

A pelican traces the surface of the ocean. Its wings wobble as it banks over the swells. “And that was Palatine?”

“Interim headmaster. So _well-educated._ So _kindly.”_ His mouth sneers, and then he slumps. “I thought so. And he didn’t make us meditate. So I thought he was great. For years. And he taught us history. The new headmaster. It seemed like he knew everything, the secret history of everything; he’d always put the book down and tell us about the deals that were made, how things really got done. Things no one else would tell us. He was lawyer. Everybody knew him. And he knew. Everybody.”

His voice gets rougher with every word. When it breaks, he turns his face away. Rey kneels down on the ground.

“And all that time Donny was off at Santa Anita, breathing sawdust. He met Bess there, you know. And then they sent them off to different camps. So he didn’t even know where she was. I’d never’ve known, if Donny hadn’t told me after. The Mitakas came back here, when they let them go. I guess it wasn’t worse than anywhere else. But Donny used to sneak down to the orchard. Because it’s _his._ His property. I found him one time, just walking around. He thought I’d run him off, but we got to be — we talked. A lot. Climbed the trees. Horsed around.”

He stops again. The wind peels a thin veil of sand up from the beach and whips it around them. Rey, who will always be a hunter, the desert’s daughter, holds very still, and waits.

* * *

“It’s a blueprint for a weapon,” Rose tells him in a quiet voice. “A special missile they can fire, guided, from an airplane. So they don’t have to be over the target, like ordinary bombers. Armand is ready to make them; he’s building a factory. He wants to sell them to the French. Because the French are losing. They’re fighting their Dirty War against us, and we are beating them.” She gives him a proud look. “They think we’re ignorant peasants. But we can build factories. We can buy weapons. We have artillery. They thought they could defeat us at Điện Biên Phủ with their airplanes, but we have the guns to shoot them down, and now they’re trapped.”

“So you want to get the weapon for your side? What _is_ your side?”

She smiles as she tells him, her voice low. “We’re the Việt Minh. The League for the Independence of Việt Nam. We have allies all over the world. But the missile wouldn’t do us any good,” Rose admits. “What matters is: His father is coming to the States today. Armand is going to give him the plans to take to the French government. There’s a letter to them in the case with the plans. The plans are important, but what matters is the letter. The French say they want peace; there is going to be a summit in Geneva on the 26th.”

"26/4," Finn says, blinking. "April 26th. It was written on the back of your sister's laundry ticket."

"We have to get the plans and the letter to Bác Hồ before he leaves for Geneva. The Americans are mediating, and they will pretend the French are in good faith, but if they see the letter, they won't be able to pretend. _And,"_ she says, her smile returning, "probably they’ll be angry that the Huxleys went to the French first. They might want it for themselves. Maybe enough to side with us sometimes during the summit.”

"That's what Paige was doing?”

Rose picks up the peeler again and resumes her work. “Yes. Her contact – whoever he was – promised her passage to Japan for four thousand. Secret passage, without the Americans or the Japanese government knowing. In Japan there we have comrades who will help us.”

“But you don’t have her contacts. You don’t have the cash.”

“If I can’t get the plans and the letter to Bác Hồ in time, I’ll destroy them. Even a delay is valuable; Điện Biên Phủ may surrender any day, and if it does the French will give up their war. But I have to try to complete my sister’s mission.”

The peeler makes neat, quick stripes down the carrots, the metal blade clicking against the pale wood of the cutting board at the end of each stroke. Finn reaches out and puts his hand over hers. The clicking stops, and she stares at him. “Rose, you can’t. It’s impossible.”

“I have to do everything I can.”

“You can’t stay here with these people. Huxley – his wife – ”

She looks up at him steadily. “I have to fight for the future. I’ll endure whatever I have to.”

Finn swallows. “I don’t like the way he touches you,” he says, low. “I don’t like the way he looks at you, or the way he talks about you. I don’t like these.” He brushes the red stains of Mrs. Huxley’s hands on her cheeks with his fingertips. “I don’t like any of it.”

Her eyes are so soft. “Whatever I have to do.”

He tightens his grip on her hand. “Does he force you?” _I’ll take you away from here. I’ll find somewhere safe. I’ll find a way._

She shakes her head, and he exhales. “No. He’s just – strange.”

“Strange how?”

“When he was a boy, he’d come and find me when his father beat him. Hold my hand and cry into my lap. His mother was dead; she died giving birth to him, I think.” She sounds a little sad. For the dead woman or the beaten boy or both. “Now he comes to find me when he’s lonely. When he’s scared. He holds my hand and tells me ridiculous things. That he’ll get rich, when his father dies, and he’ll divorce la phasme and marry me.” She snorts. “He’s _already_ rich. Look at this.” She waves her hand at the house, the garden, the little glimpse of the sea through the small kitchen window. “But he goes on about it. He smokes, and he watches me work, and he… talks nonsense.”

She isn’t meeting his eyes. Finn remembers her slack body, like a fallen marionette in Huxley’s arms. There are a lot of things a man can do to a woman, can make a woman who works for him do, before she has to say he forced her. “Rose… ”

“Shh!” Her head snaps up. “Listen!”

He steps back, trying to hear what she hears. Then he catches it – the engine, the slide of car wheels over the gravel. “He’s back?” he whispers.

“Wait here. Stand behind the door.” She snatches up a little basket and some shears and hurries out into the garden. He strains to hear what’s going on. _Why would Huxley come back?_ He hears the motor die, the car door open and shut. _Can he see Rose out in the garden? What if he goes to her?_

Then Rose comes back through the kitchen door, a few lime leaves and a stalk of lavender in the bottom of her basket, nothing worse than irritation written on her face. “It’s only her lover.”

He blinks. French or not, he wouldn’t have thought it. “She has a lover?”

Rose nods, returning to the carrots. “A local. Donato Jimenez.”

* * *

The gulls flock together, then scatter across the sky. Rey watches the waves disturb the lines of beached kelp; the tide is coming in. He pushes himself back against the trunk of the cypress, his eyes shut.

“We were just playing games. Donny and me. Just… kissing games. Messing around. And he caught us. The headmaster. And Donny ran away but I was… stuck. Even if I’d run, I’d have had to come back to school the next day. I was stuck. He walked me to his office. Locked the door. He said — he said it made sense, what I’d done, because Japanese men weren’t men like white men are men, and he’d known my mom’s father and _he’d_ done the same thing with Ben Kenobi. That that was why he was soft on Kenobi, for so long, that he’d been. You know. With him. But he said he’d _helped_ my grandfather, made him give up things like that, and he’d married a beautiful woman and learned to put Kenobi in his place. Kenobi and all the Japanese. He said he.”

Ben tucks his head under his arm. Rey shifts in the grass, reaching out, and he flinches.

“Don’t. Don’t touch me when I’m. When I’m saying this. Okay?”

“Okay,” Rey whispers. She settles back on her heels. Ben’s breath strains in his throat.

“He said. He’d help me too. He. Made me come to his office. After school. Said it was like training a dog, right, with a bad dog you grab him and stick his nose in what he’s done wrong and then you hit him. And so he had me — and then he’d make sure it hurt me. You know?”

Rey can’t speak. Her heart is choking her.

“And it doesn’t even _work_ like that.” Ben claws at the ground, his hands tearing at the devil’s grass. He rips at the tangled knots of it, and sprays of sand and fine earth rise around him. “I read all about it in college. It doesn’t work like that at all; you can’t _punish_ somebody into — but I didn’t _know.”_ The pleading note in his voice is dreadful to hear. As if she might blame him. “It just got all… mixed up. Just all mixed up. And the more mixed up it got the worse I thought I was. And my parents never asked where I was, why I was staying late at school all the time. They never said a word. Maybe they never even noticed.” The ocean is so loud. Ben is a faint, harsh susurration beneath its roar. “And I was glad, because I didn’t want them to know. I was glad my uncle was gone. So he wouldn’t know.

“But then the war was over and Uncle Luke came home and he was the headmaster again. And I went to his office after school. Just out of habit. He asked me what I was doing there. And I couldn’t really think. Hadn’t really been able to think for months. I asked him what he’d do if he found two boys playing around like — like I’d been doing with Donny. And he said — he said he’d — encourage them to take up — yoga.”

He’s laughing now, his eyes squeezed shut. She can see the tears leaking out anyway.

“And I told Uncle Luke everything. Everything I’d done and everything he’d done to me and everything he’d told me. And he told me to _go home. Go home!”_ He’s tearing at the grass again with one hand, while his other arm holds his knees tight against his chest. “And nothing happens! Nothing happens! For days and days! And I have to keep acting like — and then my dad’s in my room and my mom’s in the hall and now they’re acting like they care like they want to know when they never did they _never_ wanted to know; I tried to tell Uncle Luke and he told them I was _crazy_ because Headmaster Palatine _said I must be crazy, it runs in the family,_ and Uncle Luke said they’d shock me, at the hospital, and I was _scared_ but then I saw it and it was so — it was so much worse, so much scarier, to see them do it to them in their beds — I agreed, I said whatever they wanted to hear, anything, so they’d let me out and I wouldn’t have to see it happen, so they wouldn’t do it to me — they said I’d made it all up, the headmaster, that I was pretending because I — I wanted _attention,_ and I said yes, I said it wasn’t true — I said he never — ”

He breaks off, beating his head back against the cypress tree. There’s four, maybe five feet of ground between them now. Rey crosses it on her hands and knees; if he is an animal, a frightened animal in a trap, then she’ll be an animal too. “Ben,” she says softly. He doesn’t flinch back from her this time, so she sits up on her heels and takes his head, his drawn and tear-stained face, in her hands. “Ben, if he were still alive, I would kill him for you.”

He kisses her. He throws himself at her, crushes her against the soft turf with the weight of his grown man’s body, and rubs his cheek against hers, so that they’re both wet with one another’s weeping. “Rey. They told me I was crazy, Rey.”

“You’re not. You’re not crazy, Ben.”

“I did everything they wanted. I said it wasn’t true. I went back to school. Only I still — I saw Krennick. At a bar for — ”

“Men. I know. I know.”

“And I knew he was Palatine’s crony; Krennick was always coming to the school to _consult_ with him. And to see him at that bar — _the headmaster’s friend,_ in his perfect suit, spending money to get his hands on boys, after I’d been — been _punished —_ Rey — ”

She seizes his head in her hands again. He looks down at her with red, lost eyes. “I’ll never let anybody hurt you,” she swears. “Not ever again.”

The wind off the sea is cold, but his body is warm, and his mouth on her neck is burning hot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **IRO** — [International Refugee Organization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Refugee_Organization), founded 1946 and superseded in 1952 by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.  
>  **HIAS** — [Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIAS). Between 1945 and 1951, HIAS processed and assisted 167,450 displaced persons in emigrating from Europe; they had offices all over Europe and even in Shanghai.  
>  **The Joint** — [American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jewish_Joint_Distribution_Committee). In 1946, more than 375,000 Jews in Europe relied on the Joint for food, including 65,000 in Poland.  
>  **MALBEN** — An Israeli agency providing aid to handicapped and wounded immigrants. Subsumed by the Joint in 1951.  
>  **Bác Hồ** — (Vietnamese) Uncle Hồ. A common nickname for Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnamese revolutionary leader, born Nguyễn Sinh Cung. Hồ is a very common Vietnamese surname, and "Chí Minh" means "he who has been enlightened."  
>  
> 
> The Trưng Sisters are heroic queens of early Vietnamese history, who led a rebellion against occupying Chinese forces. They are pictured in iconography riding together on war elephants. In some parts of Vietnam they are regarded as divine, semi-divine, or possessed of supernatural powers of intervention, especially over natural disasters and the weather.
> 
>  _Zichrona livracha,_ (zichrono for a man) often abbreviated _z"l_ in English text, is a Hebrew honorific for the dead.
> 
> "I've Got You Under My Skin" is often sung lightly or up-beat, but was originally written by Cole Porter as a melancholy ballad.
> 
> A crêpe-like pancake called a blintz is a very popular traditional treat among Ashkenazi Jews, stuffed with sour cream or sweet cheese and spread with jam. There is also a related Polish food called naleśniki, though I don't know how popular it is.
> 
> You may know devil's grass as Bermuda grass, couch grass, crabgrass, or Bahama grass. It grows in long tangled nodes that get matted together, and is virtually impossible to kill. [This stuff.](http://luirig.altervista.org/cpm/albums/bot-hawaii10/04764-Cynodon-dactylon.jpg)
> 
> The order that interned Japanese-Americans was rescinded in January of 1945 — postponed from November of 1944, so as not to adversely affect FDR's chances of reelection in 1944. Imperial Japan surrendered eight months later, and though an order was issued by the Japanese government to kill all surviving Allied POWs, the order wasn't universally received or obeyed, and POWs from the main camps were returned home by the end of 1945.
> 
> The Viet Minh were the Communist insurgent anti-colonial movement of Vietnam. They were popular and supported all over Vietnam, though they were most successful in the mountainous north, where Rose is from. (The Huxleys were tea plantation owners, which is only really permitted by norther weather.) Founded by Hồ Chí Minh in 1941, it actually had a lot of initial support from the US, and the Declaration of Independence Hồ Chí Minh wrote for Vietnam directly refers to the US Declaration of Independence, Eisenhower wasn't as keen on Vietnamese liberation as his predecessors had been, and was more open to the French pleas for American help in re-taking their colony. Though proposed American air support at the battle of Điện Biên Phủ never materialized, it was only because other allies declined to commit.
> 
> Hux's guided air-to-surface missile is about five years ahead of its time; the first such actual missile was produced by Martin Marietta in 1959. Martin Marietta later merged with the Lockheed Corporation to form Lockheed Martin. (Though founded in Hollywood, Lockheed was the successor corporation to Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Corp., founded in Santa Barbara, CA.)
> 
> Aversion therapy, despite being, as Ben notes, provably ineffective, is still used in some "gay conversion" programs, which remain legal in many states.
> 
>  **To skip:** Stop reading at the beginning of the section that begins "The gulls flock together, then scatter across the sky." Do a text search for "He breaks off, beating his head back against the cypress tree," to resume reading. What happens in between is that Ben tells Rey that Palatine caught him kissing Mitaka and abused him under the guise of aversion therapy, telling him that he had ended a sexual relationship between Ben Kenobi and his grandfather with the same "treatment." When Luke came back from the war, Ben told him, but Luke refused to believe him, and encouraged Leila and Hans to commit him. The doctors regarded his story as a delusion, and to escape the hospital, he agreed with them, retracting his story of abuse.


	12. The Krennick Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He kisses her. He’s still kissing her when the other car pulls up and a man steps out. They both hear him stop, and know that he’s watching them. She feels Ben bristle, and he whirls around, blocking her with his body. “What do you think you’re looking at, pal?”
> 
> “Just admiring your ride,” the man says, and Rey stiffens. She knows his voice, knows his stammer. The dealer who’d heard about Paige’s murder from the cops, and taunted Han about the Coast Guard. The one the horses didn’t like the smell of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while; I'm sorry. You may wish to back up and reread the last paragraphs of the last chapter. Please note again the warning for graphic violence, including gun violence. This chapter was very kindly read by [Bombastique](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bombastique/pseuds/Bombastique) ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/Bombastique1)) who tried very hard to save me from myself. My errors and fuckups remain my own.

She means it. She’ll never let anybody harm a hair on his head, not if she can help it. It’s not fair, that he should have to live with that. It’s too much pain for a person to take, and she can feel the anger clawing its way from her stomach to her throat.

She had cried, on the streets of Jaffa. She’d wandered the streets weeping, crying out for her parents, for help. When the major had handed her that first MRE, he’d said, in English, “Smile, girl.” She hadn’t known the word. He’d pushed her mouth up with his fingers. She remembers the rage that bubbled up in her, so thick and smothering she couldn’t even bite him.

 _We will not smile, Ben and me. Things have been taken from us, and we will not pretend otherwise for your convenience._ And what they did to him, to make him say what they wanted to hear — she won’t let anybody do anything to hurt him, not ever again. She smooths his hair back fiercely, and he lifts his head. “Never,” she repeats. She knows he sees her determination in her face, because he slides his arms beneath her shoulders and gets to his knees, pulling her with him, holding her close.

He doesn’t talk as he slips her shoes off, keeping one arm looped around her waist, holding her high against his chest. He leaves his boots and jacket beside them on the grass, and carries her down the sand. All the time he looks up at her, and she looks down at him.

He lunges into the surf up to his knees. Every wave is made of perfect blue glass for a moment, before it crests white and crumbles into foam and mud. “I won’t let you drown. I won’t let you go,” he says, and wades in further, as deep as his waist, and then deeper. The incoming tide sucks at her dress, turning it clear and cloudy. She gasps at the bracing cold. He never stops looking at her. “Kiss me,” he says. “Quick. Before the wave.”

She does, her arms around his neck, her breath held as she feels the water pulling at them. He’s frantic, trying to drink her, crushing his mouth to hers and her body against him, before the wave drags them under its crash. They fall, mouths filled with bitter water, so that when they fight free to the air, staggering against the ocean’s draw, they cough, and gasp, and taste sweet to one another’s tongues.

When they’re lying in the grass again, in the sun, they’re quiet. The wind is still, but Rey’s ears roar like shells with the memory of the surf. “Nobody comes here,” he says, at last. He puts his head in her lap, his arms around her waist. “I thought nobody would stop me. Whatever I wanted to do. Except Donny came. And now you. Donny was just an accident. But you came looking for me.”

His wet t-shirt clings to his skin; she can see the rise and fall of his breath. “Yes. I did.”

“Why didn’t you stay in Israel? Why did you come here?”

 _Because I wanted to be an American, and never worry about food. Because I wanted to run from the way I’d earned my bread. Because I didn’t want to live in a country where everything was_ us or them _and every crime is meant to pay for history’s sins._ “The man who brought me from Poland — we stepped out on the dock and someone put a bullet in his head. I had to — the first way I found to feed myself was the British. The major at the garrison would give me food if I would follow people for him. And then I’d done his dirty work and nobody would feed me _but_ the major, and the British were leaving.” She turns her head, looks out at the beach. “There was going to be a war. Another war. And my parents had already — had given so much to send me away from a war.”

“I didn’t mean to make you cry, doll. Talking about your parents like that. I was just — ”

“I know.” The sea is a sweet, serene blue. More soothing than the bright aquamarine of the Mediterranean.

“You know it’s true, though, don’t you?” His voice is soft. As if she might bite.

“Yes.” She swallows. “I know.”

He tightens his arms around her. “You came here because you were meant to. You belong here.”

Why shouldn’t she. The wind rises again to make her shiver. He’s been hurt so unfairly, and she’s lost so much. They can take care of each other. She tastes salt water; her hair is a wreck. She reaches up and pulls her fingers through it, and sings softly.

_Shnirele, perele, gildene fon_  
_Moshiech ben David zitz oyben on_  
_Er halt a becher in der rechter hant ___  
_Macht a broche oyfn gantsn land_  
_Oy omen v’omen, doz iz vor_  
_Moschiech vet kumen hayntiks yor..._

Her eyes are drawn back to the islands. All the wave peaks glimmer as the sun makes its way towards the horizon. Ben stirs in her lap. “What does that mean?”

He couldn’t know, could he. _“Little ribbons, little pearls,”_ she answers, still looking out at the channel. _“Golden flags. The Messiah waits above us. In his right hand he has a cup, and he blesses the whole world.”_ Her mother sang it. Friday evening. The Friday afternoon sun dries her dress; the lines of her foundation garment are vanishing as the white cotton turns opaque again. _“Amen, amen. This is the truth, this is the year he will come.”_

He’s silent, and she thinks of the lone woman of the island, how she must have been sure, all the time, as she built her campfires, that someone would come back for her. That she’d see her family again. That there would be a place for her. _All her people died, and there was no one left alive who spoke her language. ___

“Rey,” he says, and his deep voice resonates in her bones. “Will you come with me? Frisco or Vegas or LA; I don’t care. You can choose.”

He’s holding her so tightly it’s hard to breathe. 

It feels good. 

“Los Angeles,” she says. “Los Angeles, of course.”

“Of course.”

When he sets her down side-saddle on the back of his motorcycle, she wraps her arms around his waist, and gives a last look over her shoulder, across Mariposa Beach and the channel to Santa Rita Island, and the clouds that gather behind it.

* * *

Finn watches the carrots shed their skins under Rose’s hands. “Huxley doesn’t know his wife is…?” He gestures with his thumb towards the faint sound of voices in a distant room. “Or he doesn’t care?”

Rose shrugs. “Some of each, maybe. If he cared more, he might wonder what she does with her time.”

“Lover-boy takes up a lot of her time?”

“She also swims at the country club. And feuds with the neighbors. She’s always threatening to sue them.”

“Just a barrel of laughs, these two.” Rose smiles a little, and Finn’s heart does a bit of soft-shoe. He props an elbow on the counter, leaning in a little. “So what about this Jimenez character? Is he after something, or is ‘awful’ just his type?”

She puts down the peeler, considering. Her lips form themselves into a tidy pout. “They do talk quite a lot. I don’t know what that means, one way or another.”

_“Talk.”_

Rose smiles again. (That’s twice. Not that he’s keeping count.) “No, they really are talking. When they’re… in bed, you can tell.”

Finn isn’t sure he wants to know. “Do you know what they talk about?”

“No. I just clean up afterwards. So Armand doesn’t find out. I don’t actually _want_ him to divorce her, after all.” She makes an appalled face, and Finn just watches her for a moment, as she trades the peeler for a knife and determinedly begins chopping.

“Do you always call him ‘Armand?’”

“Sometimes I say ‘Mr. Huxley,’ but that really means his father. Armand’s mother was French, so in front of his wife and his father I call him ‘M. Huxley.’ When he was young I was supposed to call him ‘Master Armand.’” She makes a little sound of disgust.

“You really want to be a soldier?”

He’s not really sure where that came from. Maybe it’s the knife, reminding him of the one she tried to put between his ribs. Maybe it’s the peaceful act of cooking, or the disciplined efficiency she seems to bring to it.

She doesn’t answer him for a moment. “It’s not that I want to be a soldier. It’s that I want to win the war.” 

“For the future.” He hadn’t meant to sound skeptical, but he can’t keep it out of his voice.

She swallows, flushing red. “I need it. I _need_ it.”

“What’s in it?” he asks. “No bosses, no money, the general communist song and dance?”

She puts the knife down and looks at him steadily. “The French had kings for hundreds of years. Then the future came; the world changed. It can change again. Can you understand how different it would be? If no one could make us work until we dropped to make someone else so rich they never have to work? If we could decide when it was enough? If we could say no, and not have to starve for it? Can you imagine the things we could do, if the world can change?”

She’s still looking in his direction, but she’s not looking at him. She’s seeing something that shines. Then she drops her eyes to the carrots again. The last orange rounds fall behind the knife.

“I don’t,” she says softly. “I don’t want to be a soldier. I want the things everybody wants; regular things, all kinds of things.” She makes a vague gesture, and Finn suddenly wants specifics: a blue dress or a red one, strawberries or dates, a kitten or a canary, jazz records or jump blues or something else he’s never heard? Things he can afford, or things he’d have to save for? “But I want that future more than all of it. I want it so badly I’ll fight for it.”

Finn has been all over the world. He’s been a soldier for the British, a scout for the Americans, and a tracker, with Rey, of people like Rose, soldiers of dreamed-of nations. There are things he wants to tell her, about how soldiers get when wars drag on, what they do when they win, what towns look like when they leave. But she must know those things; the stories she’s told him, about famine and rebels chained by punctured hands, mean she has to know, at least a little. So there are things he wants to ask her. But then something thumps, above their heads, and a woman moans, loud and long. 

“Is that…?” But he knows it must be. There’s another thump. He feels himself blushing.

Rose blushes too, but she covers it, looking away. “Time for some tactful tidying. I’ll be right back.” She picks up a soft hand-broom and a bucket, and vanishes up the stairs.

* * *

Ren’s heart turns over faster than the engine. He didn’t mean to tell her so much, more even than he told Donny that day when he’d taken the gun and found out the old man was already dead. But she looked for him. She cried for him. Because she hates cheats and bastards, and that’s what they all are, and now she knows. They never wanted to know what goes on, but she did. And she still let him hold her down and kiss her. He should have known she would; he should have had faith.

Rey’s arms are tight around him. She likes to go fast, just like he does; she’s been desperate, just like him. 

He didn’t mean to spend so long at the beach, but he couldn’t leave with her dress still wet. (His jeans are still damp, but no one will notice that. Not like a soaked white dress.) He pulls over in front of a health food market; the old man who’s sweeping the step is wearing a watch.

“What time?” he calls.

The old man squints and draws back his head, and Ren wonders if he’s afraid of him, in his helmet and shades, or if he ever wished for a pretty girl to ride with, when he was young. “About half past four.” Ren nods, and the old man says, “Drive carefully, young fella. Wouldn’t want to distress your passenger.”

Ren tries to twist and see if Rey looks distressed, but she presses her head against his back, and that’s all he needs; warm pride spreads in his chest. She’s with him. He wants to take her to Maisie’s and show off how she thought he was worth coming after after all; he wants to take her to his room in the motor court and run her a bath and watch her get in. Scrub the tar the beach has left on the soles of her feet and see if she’s ticklish. But he has to report to Oka-san before five. He kicks his Vincent away from the curb and coasts a little down the street, out of the old man’s earshot.

“I want to take you back to my room, doll,” he says, low, and relishes the way she squirms against his back. He’d been afraid as he’d told her — a voice in his head that said _once she knows she won’t think you’re a man._ But she knows he can give it to her like she likes it. She remembers how he made her come. He wants to move her hand from his chest to his cock; he wants to make her tell him every dirty thing she wants, in technicolor detail in his ear, so he can promise her all of it and more. _We’ll go to LA and I’ll get a room and I’ll fuck her every night, make her come so often she’s hooked on it, make her need me, make her miss me when I’m not around._ “But I gotta run a quick errand first. And then we can get out of here.”

* * *

While Rose cleans, Finn examines the kitchen, frowning. Clearly she spends a lot of her time here. It’s cozy, he supposes. But there could be more light. He opens several cupboards, out of habitual curiosity, finding fine china and dried herbs and jarred spices and large tins of flour and sugar and salt and two tiny porcelain bowls with lids. There’s a little door in the corner, made of warped planks of unvarnished wood; he expects a pantry, but he finds a room. There’s a pallet on the floor, and a child-size steamer trunk with faded tags, and a little window through which light streams, filtered by the leaves of a lime tree.

He stops in the doorway, and stares at it. It should be pitiful; it’s small and there’s almost nothing in it; the only artificial light can come from a bare bulb hung from the ceiling. But it pulls at him. He wants to touch the plain walls, the hard floor, the bed hardly worthy of the name. But then he hears the clatter on the stairs.

Rose almost falls into his arms from the final step. The broom is tucked haphazardly under her arm and she brandishes the bucket at him. “Look.” Her voice is dark and cold, and a chill runs up his spine as he peers into the bucket, which is almost empty. The bottom is dusted with a fine layer of dirt and dust and ash, fine tangles of hair, and… cigarette butts.

“Galoises?”

“Fresh. Both still hot in the ashtray.”

“What do the Huxleys smoke? You said he smokes when he talks to you.”

“Armand rolls his own. She doesn’t smoke much; whatever I bring her from the store, usually Parliaments but she says she doesn’t care. And I haven’t been here to do the shopping. Maybe Armand brought her Galoises. Or else Jimenez did.”

“So we don’t know who offered who a smoke.”

“She’s tall. The little girl at the Solos’ might have taken her for a man.”

“Or maybe Jimenez heard something from her like what I heard from her husband. Is there any way we can listen in on them?”

She looks up at the kitchen clock. “She won’t let him stay much longer. Mr. Huxley is due in at the airport tonight; Armand might stop at home first.”

“Right.” Finn heads for the door into the garden. “Can you use a phone tonight? Or get away?”

“Where are you going?”

“Jimenez needs a tail. See if you can find any cigarette boxes anywhere in the rubbish; if it was her at the ranch, she probably had a whole pack. Can you call my answering service?”

“I don’t know.” Her lips arrange themselves into an anxious pout. “The phone is in the main hall and there’s an extension in the study.”

“Is it easier to slip out? Or is there a good way for me to sneak back in?”

“If you go behind the pepper tree outside the gate, there’s a loose board in the fence. That’s how I get in and out. If I can get away, I’ll wait for you there. If I can’t, come in as quietly as you can, and wait under the lime tree nearest the kitchen. If you hear me singing, you’ll know it’s all right.”

* * *

They drive fast up the hill, but not fast enough to escape the feeling of dread that’s falling on Rey. The chivalrous organization isn’t just going to let him walk away with a handshake and a pat on the back. She’s sure he’s smart enough to tell some decorous, plausible lies, and take the back streets to LA. And he can stay with her; Donny won’t know to look for him there. But wouldn’t it be better to just go? Unless he’s aiming to fake his own death. Again.

But that makes her picture him, thin and shaking, searching for a man who’d gone to his grave with more peace than he deserved or Ben ever got, and she bares her teeth against the black leather of his jacket.

He stops in front of a big two-story Victorian with a few cars already parked around it, and lets her hold him for a moment before he climbs off the Black Knight. “Doll,” he says, softly, “can you wait here? I could try to bring you in; you don’t speak Japanese. But it wouldn’t look good.”

“Of course I can wait. Leave the key in; I’ll have the bike ready if you need to go.”

He kisses her. He’s still kissing her when the other car pulls up and a man steps out. They both hear him stop, and know that he’s watching them. She feels Ben bristle, and he whirls around, blocking her with his body. “What do you think you’re looking at, pal?”

“Just admiring your ride,” the man says, and Rey stiffens. She knows his voice, knows his stammer. The dealer who’d heard about Paige’s murder from the cops, and taunted Han about the Coast Guard. The one the horses didn’t like the smell of.

Ben stiffens too, for different reasons. His fists clench and one rises a little. “What do you — ”

“Just meant the motorcycle, that’s all.” Rey remembers that insincere, placating tone from the ranch, and it doesn’t work any better on Ben than it did on his father. In fact, judging by the way his shoulders tense under his jacket, it works much worse.

“Oh yeah, you like my bike? Well, maybe I don’t like your face.”

She grabs him by the right elbow as he raises it, starting to step forward, and pulls it until he turns to face her. The icy plane of his aviators glowers down at her. “Not the time,” she says under her breath. “We’ve got other things to worry about.” She wants to know what D.J.’s doing here, herself. But first things first; they’ve got to get Ben out of here.

He twitches restlessly, like he wants to pivot back to D.J. — and D.J. is tall but Rey wouldn’t give him odds against Ben — but he blows air out through his nose at last and agrees, in a grumbling undertone. “Yeah. We do. But I don’t feel so good about leaving you out here now.”

She starts to say that she’ll be fine, remind him she’s got a knife and knows how to use it, when another car goes by and her mind goes completely blank, because it’s Finn. What’s Finn doing here? Is he looking for her? How does he know where to look? “Go,” she says, hoarsely. “I’ll — I’ll take the bike around the block and you can keep your eye on _him.”_

She all but pushes Ben away, and slides forward to straddle the bike and start the engine. It’s hard to read him, with his helmet and sunglasses on, and she hopes he’ll trust her. The glimpse she gets of him as she takes off after Finn, Ben’s turning on D.J., and she has to add the hope he doesn’t decide to start a fight after all.

But then she’s caught Finn. (The Black Knight is so fast, so fast and beautiful.) She pulls even with the driver’s side and knocks on the window. He jumps, and the car swerves, and she has swerve too. When he steadies, he’s giving her that look he always gives her, of tight-lipped, wide-eyed annoyance, and she has to smile. He pulls the car over and rolls the window down. “Rey, what the hell are you doing here? Where’d you get that bike?”

“It’s Ben Solo’s bike. I’m just... borrowing it. But what are _you_ doing here? I thought you were taking Rose home?”

“That guy in the crushed hat? He’s Huxley’s wife’s lover, and he smokes the same brand as whoever shot Rose’s sister. I want to know what he knows.”

“D.J?” Finn wasn’t there, she recalls; it had just been her and Poe with Han and Arturo. She casts around for his real name. “Jimenez?” 

“That’s the one. He and the Solo kid were going to the same place? Are they in this together?”

Rey casts a quick look back over her shoulder. The street is empty. “Ben helped the Japanese mobsters and Beckett make a move on Luke Skywalker’s school.” She sees, now, the appeal of that, to Ben. “Huxley’s oil line crosses the property. Is D.J. here for something to do with that? But why would he kill Paige?”

Finn engages the parking brake. “Let’s see if I can’t find out.”

“You can’t go _in there after him,_ Finn,” she says, appalled. “Don’t be _stupid.”_

He shrugs. “I’ll sit under a window, then.”

“Finn, you can’t — who are you even working for? Did the Solos hire you, too?”

He opens the door, forcing her to let the bike move forward. “My client is confidential.”

* * *

In the end, Finn lets her go into the house ahead of him. She’s got a better excuse for being there. But it’s the shouting that lets them in at all, a rising tide of unintelligible ire from upstairs that makes them confident enough to open the door at all. He watches Rey’s back as she creeps down the narrow front hall. It’s that kind of house; it’s big, but compared to Rancho Esperanza’s open airy spaces, it’s a maze fit for rats. It must be stifling in the heat. At least there’s floorboard and carpet, instead of tile, and their steps are close to soundless.

“ — can’t _buy_ if I’m not _liquid,”_ a man is yelling; “you told me yourself he’s the whimsical type, headstrong — ”

“Please slow down,” a mild voice implores. “I can’t translate right if you talk so fast.”

“I want to know what the hell kind of horse you were selling, Jimenez, that you only got four thousand,” demands a deep voice, and Finn and Rey both stiffen. He creeps up behind her.

“Paige had four thousand in her suitcase,” he whispers. If Jimenez didn’t kill Rose’s sister, he knows the person who did.

“That’s the thing about horse trading,” another man stutters. His voice is soft and cool as a snake, and they creep closer to hear it. “You never know what you can get for a pony. That’s why your _organization_ wants in to the business. Isn’t it?”

“No, tell me. What horse did you sell? Tell me the name.”

“I don’t do names. See, names get you attached. Names are for owners. Dealers like me — we do numbers. Just numbers. Four thousand’s what I got.”

The deep-voiced man switches to Japanese. “That’s Ben,” Rey breathes. “The stutter is D.J. The shouting one is Beckett.”

Another tide of argument rises, almost entirely in Japanese. Finn counts four, five voices, before one rasping voice cuts through and silences them all. Rey sets one foot on the stairs and then another. Finn reaches out and grabs the hem of her dress — hadn’t _she_ told him he shouldn’t go in? But she snatches it back and continues upwards. He looks despairingly back towards the door and the street, making sure he knows their extraction plan down to a step, and follows her to the second floor.

When the rasper’s said what he has to say, the mild voice says, “Oka-san — Mr. Oka would like to know if this house is not worth as much as Mr. Beckett claimed it was.” All the voices are coming from behind an open door that throws a yellow parallelogram on the rich carpet.

“It doesn’t matter how much it’s _worth,”_ Beckett growls. “I can’t sell it with your gang homesteading in it. And I need _cash;_ if I write Skywalker a bad check, it’s over. You sent that little dame to test me, but there’s a real possibility he’ll go somewhere else for a counter-offer.”

There’s a long, tense pause before a rapid flow of Japanese from the mild voice, and Finn sees Rey’s fists clench. The rasping voice drawls out a slow and poisonous question; Ben Solo breaks in urgently, with more Japanese. Finn doesn’t speak the language, but he sounds like he’s stumbling. Rey takes another step towards the bright block of light. It’s all he can do not to shout at her; he lunges, instead, and drags her back by her arm into the shadows. She snarls at him; he knew she would. She always does whenever he saves her from herself.

“There are at least seven men in that room,” he says in his lowest voice. Solo is shouting now, and through the thin sliver of the room they can see, a Japanese man takes a step forward at the same time that the old white man who must be Beckett takes a step back.

“He’s in _trouble,_ Finn,” she retorts in a hiss. “He’s in trouble because of _me.”_

“He got himself into this,” he reminds her. “He signed up.”

Solo shouts in Japanese; the rasping voice retorts, and the mild voice echoes, despairingly, _“You should have told him, Ren!”_

“You don’t understand.” Is it just the softness of her voice that makes it sound like she’s about to cry? “I can’t let them hurt him.”

* * *

Rey wriggles in Finn’s arms; he holds her tight, but he’s not going to hurt her, and it doesn’t take him long to understand how serious she is. He lets her go, and she pushes him further into the shadows, back towards the stairs. _“Go.”_ Something is happening, in the room; Ben’s gone quiet, and Beckett asks, “What the hell is this?”

“He should have told the oyabun what happened,” Donny Mitaka says. He sounds stricken. Rey slides her feet across the carpet, turning sideways against the wall, so that only the very edge of her face crosses into the doorframe.

Ben is kneeling on the hardwood floor in front of an old man with a cruel, scarred face. The old man lifts a little cup to his lips and takes a drink. He sets down the cup, and watches closely as Ben lifts an identical cup to his mouth. Ben’s hands shake, and he empties the cup with a short, unsteady sip. He sets it down, and places his trembling hand face-down and flat on a white cloth set beside him on the floor. Two Japanese men, one with shining black hair, one with a shaved head, have been extracting something from a suitcase in the far corner, but as Rey watches, the one with hair steps forward. He’s taken off his dark suit coat and rolled up his sleeves, revealing tattooed chrysanthemums on his arms. The knife he’s holding must be eight inches long, thin, flat, and shining.

 _Do you know how you’d have to apologize if you were part of my organization?_ Ben had asked Beckett, and drawn a line of blood around the tip of his finger. Now he kneels on the floor, and looks up at the man with the knife. There’s fear in his face, but much worse, unendurably worse, there is acceptance. He expects to be hurt.

Rey promised him.

The man doesn’t even have time to change his grip on the knife before her switchblade goes into his wrist. The long knife clatters to the floor, and the man bellows in pain as Rey dives for it. As soon as it’s in her fist, she slashes out with it; he jumps backwards but it slices through the wool of his suit and deep into the meat of one calf. Blood spatters onto the floor, onto Rey’s white dress, and he falls to the ground.

“Rey,” Ben says, and Rey has no time to name everything she thinks she hears in that one syllable of her name, but he’s on his feet behind her, and then his arm is around her waist, drawing her close and restraining her. “Rey, what are you doing?”

She doesn’t lower her knives, looking challengingly out at the room. Donny’s staring in horror at the fallen man; D.J. looks mildly interested, as he gathers cash into a burlap sack; Beckett is edging towards the door. There’s more blood on the longer one, and a rill of it runs down the blade towards her hand. “I told you. I won’t let anybody hurt you.”

“Rey,” he says, and the ache of his voice spreads from his chest into her back, and then the bald man who was at the suitcase steps into her line of sight, as his fallen comrade drags himself backwards. He’s carrying a sword, a real, naked steel sword, long and curved, with brown and blue tassels at the hilt. She only sees it for a second, because Ben grabs the long knife from her left hand and whirls her aside, so that she’s half-shielded by his body. Rey yells in protest. He’s taller than the man with the sword, but the sword is easily three times the length of the knife.

But that doesn’t really help the swordsman when Finn hits him square in the back and yanks the sword out of his hand.

And then Rey isn’t sure what can help her with the gun barrel she feels pressing up under her chin.

There’s racket in the room — if that man thinks he can get his sword back from Finn, he’s in for a painful disappointment, and Rey would be surprised if Beckett and D.J. haven’t booked it with whatever they can carry — but Rey’s eyes can’t focus beyond the cold gaze of the old man with the gun. He says something in Japanese, and the clamor in the room dies away, until Rey can hear Finn panting, hear the metallic shift of him settling the hilt in his hands. She can hear more than Ben’s breath; she can hear his collar scrape as he turns his head; she can hear him swallow.

She wants to yell at Finn to go, to tell Ben not to be afraid, but the old man speaks again, and pushes the muzzle of the gun so hard under her chin that she can’t open her mouth.

The long knife Ben holds hits the floor and skitters away. Slowly, Ben’s arm uncurls from around her waist, and the warm solidity of his body slips away from her. Still, he’s so close she can hear him lick his lips.

“He says put down the sword. Or he’ll shoot her.”

Finn makes a furious choking noise, and the sword clatters. Someone — there was another man, wasn’t there, besides Donny Mitaka and the tattooed one she cut — steps forward to pick it up.

Rey, trying to stay calm, notes the depth of the scar through the man’s face, the angle. His eye has to be glass. Which means his vision is impaired. If she can just get him to turn, maybe she can get Ben or Finn into his blindspot — 

As if he can hear her thinking, he chuckles and plants his feet, pivoting a little to keep his good eye on the room.

And that is very wise if he wants to keep himself safe from Ben and from Finn. But Rey does not think this man has any intention of letting her live. And she has spent years and years in the desert, keeping close company with death by starvation and worse; she is willing to risk a simple bullet to the head, and his pivot changes the angle of the gun, brings his side just a little closer to her.

She drops like a stone, and shock delays his shot enough that the bullet grazes the top of her head as she throws her weight against him with both hands on her switchblade; it’s a short knife, with blade-length lost to his clothes, and even with it plunged to the hilt in his stomach, he could still fire again. Her only chance is pain, to make him hurt so much he drops the gun from shock, and she twists her fists around the knife as sharply as she can, vicious with panic.

The gunshot deafened her, and so she doesn’t hear Ben; she only sees him as a shadow at the edge of her vision, and she yanks the knife out, falling backwards, ready to fight. But Ben pushes her backwards, hard, and she sprawls on her back. For a dazed moment, she only looks up at the ceiling. Pressed tin, painted spotless white.

Then she gasps and lifts her head, and sees Ben pry the gun from the old man’s hand. He presses the barrel just where Rey’s knife went in, and fires, obliterating the stab wound. The kick and the impact drive both men a little apart; Ben staggers a little backwards, and the boss with the glass eye stares, mouth gaping. Ben raises the gun again, and puts a bullet in his head.

Finn’s got one hand under her arm, dragging her back and up, when Ben turns and holds the gun on him. “Get your fucking hands off her,” he snarls, hoarse. His eyes are wild. “Who the fuck are you? Get your hands off her.”

Finn drops her, and she scrambles to her feet. “Ben — Ben, it’s okay — ” but Ben barks out something in Japanese, and Mitaka’s got the sword to Finn’s neck. Normally, Rey would just pity Mitaka — Finn fought his way across North Africa before he was 21 and Donny’s hands are shaking — but there’s that gun in Ben’s hands, still held on Finn. “Ben, he’s my business partner.”

“What’s he doing here?” He doesn’t lower the gun. “Is he following you?”

“He’s on _business,_ Ben.” She casts a glance around the room; as she suspected, Beckett and D.J. are long gone. The man whose leg she cut is trying to arrange himself a tourniquet, without much luck; the bald man and his friend, a square-looking type with round wire-framed spectacles, are staring at the scene in horror, eyeing the gun in Ben’s hand. “That money D.J. brought you — he didn’t sell a horse. That was a dead girl’s money. Finn’s looking for her killer.”

“So he’s what,” Ben says, and shifts the gun in his hand, “a stool pigeon?”

“He’s my _friend,”_ Rey says desperately. “He won’t turn us over to the cops, Ben.”

That little seems to calm him a bit. “He’ll let us go?”

“Of course he will. He only broke in to help me.”

Ben doesn’t seem to like that. “And he won’t interfere after this?”

“Interfere?” She wrinkles her nose. “What do you mean, _interfere?”_

“That money’s ours.”

“The dealer took it with him,” Mitaka puts in before Rey can say anything. “I tried to stop him, but then you — you and Oka-san — ”

“Ben, you can’t keep that money. We’ll get along without it.”

“We need it. For the plan.”

“Plan? What plan?” There’s a terrible sinking feeling in her stomach. Adrenaline is still coursing through her. “Ben, you can’t mean that scheme they were talking about when you came in.”

“Oka-san’s dead. But Fāsuto Ōdā needs this.” He gestures around him. Santa Teresa. The plan. “Otherwise all the dirty cash they haul in on this coast is no good to them. And they don’t want that.” He nods to the three men who are staring at them, and asks them a question in Japanese. The two relatively uninjured ones reply briefly, unhappily, glasses a little slower than shaved head. The one with the wounded leg gives a longer, angrier answer. Ben advances on him, turning the gun on him. 

“Ben. Don’t do this,” Rey pleads desperately. “What I heard — they’re going to take your uncle’s school, through what, extortion? Threats? And turn it into ranch land to launder money through horses. That’s the scheme, isn’t it?”

“You think I care if my uncle’s scared? _Fuck_ my uncle. Let him be scared. That land’s Mitaka’s,” he says, still pacing slowly towards the bleeding man, who meets his gaze. “I don’t care how we get it.” He asks the question in Japanese again, and Rey, knowing before the man speaks that he won’t change his answer, lunges for Ben’s arm, pushing him off his aim. 

“Ben, don’t!”

Ben curses in Japanese. “You don’t know what he’s saying about you, Rey!”

“No, and I don’t care! Ben, even if you don’t care how you get the orchard back, you’ll still be laundering money. You’ll be dirty.”

He lifts the gun again. Rey throws herself against his arm again, dragging at it with her free hand, and Finn takes the opportunity to do what she knew he could, knocking Mitaka’s feet out from under him and wrenching away the sword. “Go, Finn!” She cries, as she sees the uninjured men move. “Run!”

“Rey!” Finn yells, stubborn, and takes a fighting stance. 

“Run!” she repeats, fiercely. “Now!” He casts a furious and worried look at her, but he runs. He takes the sword. The two whole men and Mitaka run after him, and Rey thanks God he left the key in his car.

Ben’s arm is rigid under her hands. The look on his face is something she doesn’t want to read and doesn’t have time to; the man with the chrysanthemum tattoos is reaching across the floor for the long knife. She kicks him in the teeth; her shoes are cheap and the soles are cardboard, but she puts her heel into it and his head snaps back. He doesn’t stop reaching, though, so she steps on the back of his neck to convince him to quit.

She should have known better; as soon as he’s holding still, Ben lowers the gun and shoots. Rey screams at the sound, at the hot wet spatters up her leg. She looks up at Ben. He drops the gun; his lips are trembling, and his eyes are red and distant.

“He was going to kill me,” he says. “He was trying to — ” 

“I wouldn’t have let him,” Rey says, trying not to cry. “I never would have let him.”

He doesn’t speak, and she dares to reach out to him. She touches his shoulder lightly; can he even feel her through the leather coat? His eyes focus on her abruptly and he seizes both her hands, wrapping his big fists tightly around them so that she can’t move her fingers, can’t even drop the knife.

“You said _we.”_ He sounds despairing, and her sight blurs; she can feel the hot tears streaking down her cheeks. “And then you said _you.”_

“It’s blood money, Ben. A woman died for it. I held her sister’s hand while she cried.”

He’s still looking at her but his eyes aren’t right. She remembers Pío, in the library, passing his hand in front of his face. _Not there. Behind his eyes._ But he is there, she can see him. Like a leopard in a snare. Like a prisoner in a cell.

“D’you remember, doll,” he says, “how you scratched me? Just last night. I got inside you and you scratched my face. You felt so good and I just thought, _I hope it never fades.”_ His fists tighten on her hands, and he pulls the one with the knife close. Close, and up. “Wanted to show everybody. What you did to me.” He puts the tip of the knife to his skin, and she struggles, but she can’t stop him; he’s too strong, and she’s too afraid of hurting him. “Wanted everybody to see what kind of dolly I had.” He drags the blade slowly down his face, tracing the path of her fingernails. “Wanted everybody to see what we did to each other.”

She sobs. He’s weeping too, wet lines of tears parallel to the terrible bloody line he’s drawing with her knife, her hand.

“Ben,” she whimpers, “Ben, _please.”_

But he doesn’t stop. He draws the line all the way down to his jaw, and then he lets her go. 

“I thought we wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore. I thought we’d be safe.”

She can’t move. She wants more than anything to drop her knife, to throw it at his feet and make him admit what he’s done to himself, but her fingers won’t open. There are steps on the stair, and Ben scoops up the gun and pushes past her, shouting in Japanese. She stands for a moment, alone in a room with two corpses, blood on her skin and on her white dress. 

She can’t let him do this. She can’t let him hurt himself any more than he already has.

She runs down the stairs; the door to the house is open, and she can hear motorcycles starting, a car’s wheels turning. Her feet skid in the gravel driveway; she can see Ben and Mitaka’s bikes racing away, a black Ford following them. They’re heading down into the city.

Her head whips around when the car pulls up beside her, her knife half-rising, but it’s Finn. It’s Finn, in their car, and he throws the door open for her. She slams the door behind her, and then sits frozen, staring down the empty street. “Are you all right?” Finn asks anxiously, and she can’t answer. But finally she forces her fingers to open and the scarlet knife to drop from her hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **MRE** — Meal, Ready to Eat. A rations packet; in this case a box intended to be 1 day’s food for an adult male soldier fighting beyond supply lines. Instant oatmeal, five crackers, a tin of meat, bouillon cubes, a block of tea, a square of vitamin-enriched chocolate, and some hard candy. The meat and the bouillon cubes would not be kosher, and likely not halal, either.
> 
> The events surrounding the founding of the modern state of Israel are complicated, disputed, and the ugly. Some basic dates relevant to Rey’s particular story: In 1939, a British policy paper recommended the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, and set a recommended quota for Jewish immigration that made both Nationalists and Zionists furious. Terrorism and rioting were frequent for the next few years, though there was a break in 1946 after a Zionist group bombed British Army Headquarters. In November 1947, the British announced a plan to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into two states, divided along religious lines. People started killing each other immediately, as might have been foreseen, considering the regular intercommunal riots in the area and the catastrophic nature of the partition of India four months earlier. The first stage of the conflict, the war Rey fled, began with the destruction of Palestinian property, and rapidly escalated to bombing civilians.
> 
> [“Shnirele, Perele”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrR2FqiVQKE) is a Yiddish song, derived from a traditional women’s sabbath prayer. (A more meditative, ecstatic version [here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBby_P9nkYs)) Rey, growing up in a Jewish household in Warsaw, would have spoken both Polish and Yiddish. Yiddish is a language of the Germanic family with major components (including the alphabet) borrowed from Hebrew, with additional influence from Aramaic and various Slavic languages. Used at the beginning of the century by Jews across Europe, in America, and in the Middle East, it had an estimated 13 million speakers prior to WWII, forming an international culture with a rich poetic, scholarly, dramatic, and literary tradition which united a large portion of the Jewish Diaspora across national borders. The Nazis dedicated themselves to the destruction of this culture, along with the people who made it, burning libraries and destroying printing presses. It was further extinguished by Zionist policy in the post-war Middle East, which preferred Hebrew as a way of uniting European Jews with Arabic and North African Jews, and worked to smother Yiddish. (There was also a psychological aspect to this; Yiddish was associated with its own persecution.) Yiddish culture in America faded more quietly, mostly through assimilation, but it is reviving, mostly in ultra-Orthodox and Chassidic communities, where it is many people’s first language. The Yiddish term for the Holocaust (called _Shoah, catastrophe,_ in Hebrew) is _Churban Europa_ — the destruction of Europe.
> 
> The bed in Rose’s room, which Finn regards as a “pallet,” is actually just a typical Vietnamese bed, and the bowls with lids he sees in the cupboard are Vietnamese teacups.
> 
> What Rey is witnessing with the saké cups is the end of a yakuza induction ritual. Elaborate tattoos are also quite common among the yakuza; chrysanthemums are a patriotic symbol of imperial Japan.
> 
> The long knife is a tantō, a flat and extremely sharp blade of traditional Japanese design. They are the tool of seppuku, ritual suicide, as well as yubitsume, the yakuza amputation of the little finger. That Ben is threatened with having his finger cut off rather than being ordered to cut it off himself is an insult; it implies that Oka-san thinks he's too weak to do it himself.
> 
> In the pre-war period, Emperor Hirohito ordered the mass production of swords, which had previously been an expensive privilege restricted by law, for the expanding military, including non-commissioned officers. (Brown and blue tassels signify a warrant officer’s sword.) Called shin guntō, they were machine-made rather than hand-forged like traditional katanas. They were supposed to be surrendered to the Allies; in occupied post-war Japan, they were illegal to possess and subject to confiscation. As a symbol of Imperial pride, right-wing groups clung to them. Some hardliners used them to behead POWs in violation of the terms of surrender.


	13. Salsipuedes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Skywalker does come out. He opens the door in his shirtsleeves, looking bleary and out-of-sorts. His empty right shirt cuff hangs down, unpinned. “You’re not safe here,” she says. That’s what she came to say. “The people who want your land are going to come for you. You’re not safe.” He’s staring at her, his eyes flicking wildly over her blood-spattered dress, down to the stained blade still open in her hand; he stares, and he doesn’t say anything, and her rage bubbles up. She’s filthy and she’s exhausted; she came here to warn him, and he lives here on stolen land with a crop that feeds only birds, paying tribute to a monster. 
> 
> _“How could you?”_ she shouts. _“How could you do that to him?”_
> 
> * * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks again to [Bombastique](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bombastique/pseuds/Bombastique) ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/Bombastique1)) for an insightful read and advice on names. My errors remain my own.

Finn parks the car behind the same hibiscus bush. Its pink flowers are furling as the sun goes down. His steps on the road sound too loud, but everything sounds wrong, too loud or not loud enough. He never had the nerves for a soldier; he’s got guts when he has to, but it rattles him, the blood and the screaming.

Rey’s nerves are different; she’s ruthless in the moment, and it’s hours, days sometimes, before she shakes and the tears run down her face. Today is something else, though; he’d watched frowning through the glass of the phone booth until she’d given him a nod to tell him she’d reached Poe, like they’d agreed, and he’s sure he saw her fingers tremble as she spun the dial. But they’d agreed; there were too many things to do to do them together, and he’d dropped her off and driven away. To report to his client. He hadn’t liked leaving her there, but he hasn’t liked much about today since he saw those cigarette butts, and it had troubled him to imagine Rose standing alone by the fence in the deepening dark, so he’d gone.

Rose isn’t by the fence, which means she hasn’t been able to get away. That makes sense; it’s not really that late yet, and he doesn’t know when the Huxleys eat. He pictures Rose standing at Armand Huxley’s elbow while he eats, and he feels his mouth harden a little.

He finds the loose board without much trouble. The pepper tree’s long boughs hang on both sides of the fence, and there are hedges, too, for cover. The house seems mostly quiet, warm light glowing through the eaves, and he worries as he creeps through the garden about what might be keeping Rose. But she’s singing. He can hear her through the window, quiet and soulful and stubborn.

_< Let us wipe away the past,>_  
_< All you enslaved, rise up, rise up!>_  
_< The world will change its foundations;>_  
_< We are nothing, let us be all!>_

He can’t help smiling, where he stands in the shadows. Of course she would; she _would_ sing the socialist anthem in the language of the very people she aims to overthrow, right under their noses in their own house.

 _< There is no supreme savior,>_ she’s singing as he knocks lightly. _< No God, no Caesar, no tribune. We makers, let us save ourselves.>_ She opens the door, and his smile fades away. Her eyes are lined in bright red, and of course it’s not exactly good news he’s bringing her.

He tells her, as quickly as he can, abridging Rey’s lunatic defense of Ben Solo, Solo’s murderous coup, and his own little bit of stupidity with the sword (still in his car, jammed down between the seats) to a intra-gang scuffle that’d let Jimenez make off with four thousand. He expects Rose to see the number the way he does – the nearest thing to proof that D.J. killed her sister and took her cash. But instead her forehead creases into a troubled frown, and when he’s done telling, she bites her lip.

“Was the money in her suitcase?”

Finn stops. Had it been? He shuts his eyes for a moment, summoning up the bare room, the men in it. His attention had been on the weapons, but… “No,” he says, blinking. “No, it was in a burlap sack.”

Rose steps past him, out the kitchen door and into the garden. There’s more shadow than light, and the white gravel is ghostly grey. The bougainvillea rustles, papery, in a stirring evening breeze, and Rose leans into its shade, narrowly avoiding its prickling branches.

“I did more cleaning,” she says, quietly. Her face is turned towards the sea, and the big soft arcs of her hair blow across her face. “I cleaned the whole house while Armand was picking up his father. There’s four thousand dollars cash behind Mme. Huxley’s dresser. And no sign of the plans, anywhere in the house. He doesn’t have them, and she’s made sure of it.”

* * *

Ben’s head doesn’t make any sense. The only relief is the line down his face that burns in the wind as he drives; that pain makes sense. None of the rest of it does. It’s that same feeling, from the hospital, when any minute could be the one they chose to hold him down and shock him; nothing is safe and there is no one he can depend on. Rey saved him, but she betrayed him; she risked her life to spare him pain, but she doesn’t want him. Nobody wants him; he always tries so hard, but why would anybody want him; he’s sick and he’s broken and he’s a brute and now he’s a killer, too. (Rey screaming, legs streaked with Saito’s blood.) He presses the back of his glove to his face and pulls on the cut. That’s a clean pain, and it lets him think. 

He’s a sick broken brute, a degenerate and a low-life, and there’s a place for men like that. It’s his place. He won’t run from that; he won’t pretend to be a hero. _A plain-dealing villain._ He’ll take his place. He stops the bike. Donny pulls up behind him, and Kanda and Hanataka take a minute to catch them in the car. He shouldn’t have been driving so fast anyway.

“Mitaka.” His voice sounds strange in his ears. Raw, maybe, or distant. “<Find the real estate man. Let him know the deal’s not off. He needs us; he’ll cooperate.>” Donny nods stiffly. “<You two. We need to find the horse dealer. You try his office. If he’s not there, check the sheriff’s; he might squeal. I have some… avenues to pursue.>” The two older men’re looking at him with suspicion. He’s an American and a traitor; why should they trust him? 

But they’re criminals, too. _It’s blood money, Ben._ And Oka-san, with his gun to Rey’s chin like that – serving him was supposed to be something Ren could be proud of. He’s a traitor now, he’s a killer, but they – they’re cheats and bastards, aren’t they? They made him think they were honorable. But they’re staring at him. He’s given them orders; he’s sticking to their plan. If he doesn’t deliver – and he can see the way all their eyes turn to the fresh cut on his face. A degenerate, and a madman, too. 

Just like before. 

He takes the gun out of his pocket. _Not like before. Not helpless like before._ A madman with a gun; that’s who he’ll be. They’ll have to listen to a madman with a gun. _“ <Go!>”_ he roars. And they go.

* * *

Rey walks down a narrow, winding driveway. The smell of the trees aches at her, and she moves her closed switchblade from hand to hand. The olives are only just beginning to bud, but the pits of the past summer’s fallen harvest, flesh long rotted away, crunch beneath her shoes. She imagines Ben here, draping a skinny boy’s body awkwardly over a low limb, skidding on the slippery mix of dry leaves and decaying oily fruit, chasing his friend in the shadowed paths between the rows of trees. Whispering new words under his breath.

The drive isn’t lit, and by now she’s far from the streetlights of Sevilla Lane. This land really does match the demands of the rich girl she’d pretended to be; the sound of the sea is louder than the sound of the highway, and the crickets are louder than both. She could be miles from anywhere. _I could be in the hills outside Jaffa, on my way to the desert, trying to steal mouthfuls of unripe olives, cutting my tongue on the stones. The flesh so bitter I gagged. The orchard-keeper with the shotgun on patrol._ Then the sunny smell of eucalyptus pulls her back to the present, and she sees the one yellow light that glows in the evening dark.

She emerges from the trees into a cleared space, where a cluster of little buildings brushes against the lip of the dry riverbed. She walks towards it, just out of curiosity, to see the rising moon glitter on the thin trickle of water between the rocks before she turns back towards that single burning light. It comes from the farthest building, set a little outside the cluster.

Rey threads her way between the buildings, looking idly at cobweb-clogged windows and decks strewn with leaves. But a far wall catches her eye and makes her stop.

She shakes as she walks towards it. Her fists clench. The mural is simple, done in clean earthy colors. A sweeping forehead, a patrician nose. Snowy hair and kindly eyes. The hand-painted text a little uneven: _In memory, Stephen Palatine. 1882 – 1950. Headmaster of Olive Tree School in Time of War. Great man, great spirit, great teacher._

* * *

Finn frowns. “He must have had the plans; why else would he have called me off the search?”

“No.” Rose shakes her head, and her curls dance in the breeze. “I heard them at dinner. She told his father Armand had lost the plans. If she were wrong he would have said so.” The bleak despair in her voice takes him aback. “She killed my sister, and kept the money, and destroyed the plans.”

“Why would she do that? Why wouldn’t she give them back to her husband? He’d be pleased, and she’d be that much richer.”

“Maybe she didn’t want him to know what she’d done. It would give him power over her.”

“But why would she do it at all, if not to get the plans?”

“She’s French.” Her spine is poker-straight, her face is iron-hard. “Someone in Intelligence must have told her that Thai Cô Bê was a rebel. It would be like putting down a rabid dog to her.”

He looks down at her clenched fist. The memory of the sword-hilt is raw against the skin of his hand. It feels like it’s someone else who does the reaching out, but the warmth of her wrist under his fingers goes straight to his heart. She looks up, startled, but she doesn’t pull away, and her black eyes search his.

“I know it doesn’t make sense,” he says softly. He means so many things. How would Mrs. Huxley know to find her in the Solo’s barn? Why wouldn’t she give her husband his plans back? But there are more things than that that don’t make sense. Things that never will, never could make sense. He’d tripped on his own tongue with Bê bleeding out in his arms, because death takes the verb _estoy,_ as if it could be changed. And the dead can’t care what words the living say, but the living care so much. Rose cares so much. “Not much makes sense, but I won’t stop until I’ve figured out everything I can. I promise.”

“You promise.” Her lower lip trembles, and then pouts as she tries to steady it, and she turns and buries her face against his front. Hesitantly, he cups the back of her head and tries to think, while his other hand slips down her wrist and around her palm.

* * *

Maybe she’ll vomit. It seems possible, as the bile rises in her throat, and her eyes swim. When it doesn’t happen, she spits, and then the dirty knife in her hand is open and she’s slashing at the paint and stucco, scoring lines through the smiling eyes and the wry mouth. She hacks and hacks at it, blunting the knife, until she’s gasping, and the smiling image is still there, only a little chipped. She could gouge at it for hours and hardly make a difference. She spits again, and wipes her eyes furiously on the back of her wrist.

The fury carries her straight to the light, brings her fist down hard on the door, pounding fit to wake the dead. _Come out. Come out and listen to me._

Skywalker does come out. He opens the door in his shirtsleeves, looking bleary and out-of-sorts. His empty right shirt cuff hangs down, unpinned. “You’re not safe here,” she says. That’s what she came to say. “The people who want your land are going to come for you. You’re not safe.” He’s staring at her, his eyes flicking wildly over her blood-spattered dress, down to the stained blade still open in her hand; he stares, and he doesn’t say anything, and her rage bubbles up. She’s filthy and she’s exhausted; she came here to warn him, and he lives here on stolen land with a crop that feeds only birds, paying tribute to a monster. 

_“How could you?”_ she shouts. _“How could you do that to him?”_

* * *

The Black Knight is quiet. The rough ground slows the bike a little – once there were paths, he remembers, worn by students’ feet, but they’re long gone now. Still he can make a straight line towards the headmaster’s cottage. The gun must be cool by now, but he sucks his stomach in, keeps his flesh away from where it sits in his jacket pocket as if it could burn him.

He’ll show it to Uncle Luke, and he’ll say – what will he say? What would a madman with a gun say? _You told them I was crazy. Are you sorry to be right?_

He sees it out of the corner of his eye, the painted silhouette of the old headmaster. He knew it was there. But pain runs through him to see it, icy and unreachable pain, just to halfway see it in the dark. His mind feels like wind; there’s nothing in his head he can hold onto. And there really is wind, so close to where the Salsipuedes meets the sea, and so he thinks he’s hallucinating for a minute, putting angry voices into the chilly blur of sound. He parks the bike and pushes his shoulders up around his ears, and then he realizes it’s real. It’s real, and it’s Rey’s voice.

“You betrayed him. You _abandoned_ him.” Her words are scalding. Who is she talking to? Who is she talking about? _She said that handsome black man was just her business partner, but it’s obvious he loves her; why shouldn’t she love him; she –_ “He’s your nephew. He was your _student._ Palatine interfered with him, but you – you could have helped him, and you _destroyed_ him.”

And then maybe Uncle Luke is talking, or maybe he isn’t, but he can’t hear and he doesn’t care. _Him,_ she means _him;_ she’s angry at Uncle Luke because of him, because – 

But if she cared why didn’t she – 

How can she care when she doesn’t want him; it doesn’t make any sense – that old feeling, that old freezing pain makes sense – he’s disgusting and nobody wants him – no one cares enough to want to know – but she does but she can’t – 

He turns and runs. The art room isn’t even locked.

* * *

Her eyes burn, and her lungs burn; she’s burning up with anger, boiling away to nothing like a forgotten pot, and Skywalker isn’t even saying anything. Is he ashamed? He ought to be ashamed. But it’s not enough; it’s not enough; he owes Ben more than just shame.

He raises his eyes to hers. “You don’t understand,” he says, and her fury renews itself all over, because they all say that, every one, every thieving pimp, every heavy-fisted husband who wants her to find his wife, every rotten cruel man she has to deal with.

“What don’t I understand? How it would have been a scandal? How it would have looked for your school? How the old man was an upstanding citizen? How he was friends with your father?”

“My school is fallen,” he says. His voice is hoarse. “I know I did wrong. When the river ran dry, I knew.”

“Oh, that’s when you knew? Not when you covered up a boy’s suffering by making him suffer more? By making him _lie,_ making him smile and pretend it never happened?”

“I tried to have mercy. I was judged.”

“Mercy on who? Palatine? Krennick? Rich old men who like hurting boys?”

He turns his head to the side, wincing as if she’s hit him. “You don’t understand.”

“Ben trusted you. He told you. Did you really believe he’d make it up?”

He turns his face back to her, but his eyes are closed, as if even the soft glow of the moon and the porch light were too much. “No,” he says, softly. “Not make it up. When he first told me, he – it was hard even to understand what he was saying. He cried. He stammered. It looked – it did look very much like a breakdown. But I did listen to him. I told him to go home, to be safe, and I… confronted Mr. Palatine.” He takes a breath that swells him, and briefly, his posture straightens; his shoulders go back, and she can see under his anchorite’s beard and faded clothes the outline of a brave man. Then he exhales, and Rey sees pain and exhaustion pull him down. “He explained – he told me Ben’s story started with the truth, that he’d been caught doing unhealthy things with the Japanese boy.” He must misread the look on her face. “Of course I didn’t want to think it was true. But he was young, and boys do sometimes… and – and he said the other thing Ben said was true. That my father and Kenobi, when they were young – ”

He breaks off. Like a sleepwalker, he trudges right past her and to the edge of the porch. She follows; he’s not going to walk out of this. He seats himself on a dusty bench and looks up at her. “I hated my father, Miss Jaffa. For many years.”

“You were happy enough to take the land he gave you.”

“It was a spiritual weakness in me, that hatred. I gave voice to it in public, and it hurt him. Deeply.”

“Maybe he deserved to be hurt. He set down laws that let people be imprisoned for the place their parents were born. He stole from people with the law, and without it; with arson and murder and extortion.”

Skywalker looks away from her again. “It’s difficult for me to feel able to say who deserves what. You’re young; you know the answer to every question. I thought I knew what he deserved, at the time. I denounced him. Repudiated him. I was – young men have strong feelings. It felt good to hate him; it felt rational.”

“It was.” 

Luke’s mouth tightens. “But when he was dying, I went to see him. And then I was less sure. He did have love in him. A great deal of love. He gave me this land in love, and I have kept it for the sake of that light in his soul. I wanted to believe there was light in him,” he says pleadingly, and looks at her from beneath his shaggy brows. “And what Mr. Palatine said was… reassuring to me. He had known my father and my mother. I never had. I always wanted to believe they were romantic; beautiful and kind. But my adoptive parents made me imagine they must have been terrible sinners, and when I found out Varder was my father – it seemed like they were right.”

Rey looks back towards the dark orchard. She knows what it’s like, to dream of parents who will come back and save you. How much it hurts to know they never will. She shuts the knife in her hand and clips it to her dress.

“To have Palatine tell me that there had _always_ been love in him. It was only… misdirected. That he had been kind, once; that there was goodness in him. And he told me that, and he told me how much my father had loved my mother. How he had been tormented by her insanity. It must have torn his heart out to commit her to care. Maybe that was Palatine’s way of reminding me that she _had_ been insane, that the potential of that was in our bloodline. That it was in Ben and in me, both. But he spoke to me very kindly. More kindly than any army shrink. He’d known her; he said it was the same with her, that she – stared at nothing.” He’s silent for a moment, his mouth hanging open. “That she talked nonsense. Took ordinary things and made them awful.”

“How?”

Luke looks at her, his startled eyes re-focusing. “I don’t know. He didn’t say, and I supposed I could… imagine. Mistaking nightmares for memories. Seeing enemies lurking in the bushes. Hiding in impossible places, waiting for you to slip up so they could fall on you.” He swallows hard, and lowers his head, chin almost to his chest. “He was so kind. I wanted to believe him.”

“Because he praised your father.”

“Yes, I think so. But not only that.” He sighs harshly, and gets to his feet. His feet grind harshly against the wood as he turns back towards the door. “I had been gone so long.” He wraps his empty cuff in his left hand and tugs. “Did you think this was a medically necessary amputation, Miss Jaffa? It wasn’t. It was done with a sword, to punish me for disobeying my guards. And it was only the beginning. The only thing that got me through was dreaming of home.” He looks up and his blue eyes shine with tears. “I needed to believe that it was better here. If I lived through imprisonment and torture for the sake of a home that was… I couldn’t have borne it. And so I chose to believe him. That Ben had lost his mind, like my mother, and made it up.” He looks away once more, deliberately this time, off into the dark where the riverbed lies silent. “And then Ben went to the hospital, and the river ran dry, and I knew I had done wrong. I denied it, for years. But I couldn’t teach. I had been judged. The sun-father, the sky itself, had judged me. I closed the school.”

 _The sky has nothing to do with it,_ Rey almost says. Instead she says, “You need to tell your sister.”

“I can’t.” He shakes his head. “You can tell her, if you must.”

“If _I_ must?” she snarls, and then his head snaps up, and Rey notices a strange sound somewhere nearby.

“Fire,” Skywalker says. His eyes, which have been vague, trapped in the sins of the past, harden and sharpen. Rey’s mind races. _Already? Well, why not; why wouldn’t they? Burned land is cheaper, isn’t it?_

“Mr. Skywalker, we have to go – ”

He’s standing straight, his shoulders back and his mouth stern. “I’ll call the fire department. Don’t worry; we’ll get you to safety.” He turns and rushes inside; Rey takes two steps after him and stops. It’s an office, this room; it’s the headmaster’s office. Luke is bent over the phone on the desk, barking, _“Olive Tree School. Sevilla Lane. Structural, with wildfire potential. One civilian; I’m evacuating her now. Send – ”_

 _“Rey!”_ someone calls outside in the distance, and she runs back out on the porch. She can’t see anybody. _“Rey, I’m here; where are you?”_

Poe. Come to get her just like they’d agreed; just like him to be just in time. “I’m here,” she calls, running out into the dark. The fire is climbing, the smoke piling up. _Of course they’d start with one of the buildings, the eucalyptus porches –_

 _“Rey!”_ Poe calls again, and she turns towards the sound of his voice. _“Rey, what’s going on?”_

She opens her mouth to call to him again, and that’s when Ben steps out of the shadows. He’s wearing his helmet and his aviator sunglasses; she falls back a step. Then she sees his throat bob as he swallows – it doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous, she’s seen so many men swallow hard and bring themselves to violence – but for some reason it’s him she’s suddenly and most coldly afraid for. “Ben,” she says softly.

He drops a can on the ground between them. Turpentine. “Call the fire department,” he says. His whole face is twisted; his lips tremble.

“Your uncle has. They’re on their way.” She sees the flames now, rising into the night, and understands exactly what’s burning. “You set fire to the wall with the memorial.”

“There were knife marks. That was you?”

Her pathetic little scratches. Now it’s all gone up in flame. “Yes.”

“I wasn’t thinking,” he says, dazedly. “The trees will catch. Donny should have the trees. Call the fire department.”

“Ben, your face – ”

“Rey!” Poe yells, and there he is, charging around a corner. “Rey, the fire – ” He skids to a halt, staring. “Benny? Ben Solo?”

“Ren,” Ben says. He retreats a step or two into the shadow, but the shadows are growing shorter as the lurid light of the fire grows, and then all three of their heads turn towards the sound of a siren, and when Rey looks back, Ben is gone.

* * *

Sternly, Finn tries to order himself into logic, even as he lets his chin settle in her smooth hair. _Whoever killed Bê either knew where she’d be or had a reason to be in the Solo’s barn. Le phasme might have French contacts who were stalking her. D.J. is a horse man; Solo’s horses are worth thousands. D.J. might have thought the plans were worthless and dumped them. But they had Huxley’s name on them, and he’s an item with Mrs. Huxley; he would have asked her..._

Rose is so warm and so soft. Of course Huxley wants her; what’s not to want? She shifts against him, and his hand slides down the back of her neck. His thumb lingers in the soft fur of the short hairs there, and her fingers flatten against his chest. He thinks she’ll push him away, but they close around handfuls of his shirt, and she turns her face up to him, eyes closed and mouth just a little open. He takes a deep breath, trying to think of the right thing to do, which can’t possibly be this. But he’s still shaky from the fight, and her lips are dusky pink in the gathering dark, and he lets his mouth fall down hard on hers.

Her hands tighten in his shirt, and when he draws his mouth back a little, she follows, rising on her toes. A cold thought strikes him and he pushes her down a little. (How did his hand end up on her hip?)

“You don’t have to do this,” he says. “You don’t owe me anything.”

She looks up at him, her small dark brows gathered into a frown. Then she slips her hand up to rest against his face, and her frown clears away like a frightened flock of birds. “In the future, no one will owe anyone anything with their body. People will only touch each other because they love each other like equals, like comrades.”

“Yeah?” he says, a little dazed. “Is that how comrades kiss each other?”

She smiles, lopsided and teasing. “Only when their comrades are particularly handsome.”

“I think I like the future.”

“It’s coming. I’ll make sure of it.”

“I can’t wait.”

He sinks back into a deep kiss. She tastes like lime, like leaves, like green new life, and she pulls him back into the dark kitchen, through the little door, and down onto the thin little bed where the pillow smells like her hair.

* * *

Half Poe’s head is eaten up with the whirl of seeing the dead boy walk – it’s him; it really is Ben Solo, just as alive as he is, though what the hell has happened to his face? The other half is ex-Air Force, born and raised in Santa Teresa, and it sees a fire, and sees Rey unmoving, staring at the shadow where Ben had been.

“You have to go,” he tells her. “The keys are in the car, and the fire department is coming. Where’s Skywalker?”

She shakes herself, and points. “He’s in his office. He called for the firemen.”

“Go start the car; I’ll get him.”

She goes, running, and Poe runs in the direction she pointed. Skywalker is running between the buildings, a shovel in his hand, and Poe gives chase. “Mr. Skywalker! Sir! We have to go; the firemen are on their way!”

Skywalker keeps going. At least he’s headed towards the front drive; maybe he’s got enough sense to self-evacuate. But that shovel – and as Poe catches up, he plunges it into the ground beside some weeds, leaning on it with his elbow and his one hand, and levering up the green. He works fast; by the time Poe’s next to him, he can see what he’s trying to do, the trench he’s trying to draw between the buildings and the little ocean of trees. Rey’s got the car running, like he asked, but she’s gotten out, seeing that Skywalker’s not cooperating. The siren is very close.

“The fire department is coming,” he says. “Mr. Skywalker, they’ll take care of this.”

“The trees will catch,” Skywalker says. “I let the weeds grow. I didn’t clear the dead matter.”

The orange light of the fire is beginning to illuminate the orchard, but the white glow of the firetruck’s headlights is still visible as it careens down the dark tunnel of the driveway. Poe can hear, mingled with the howl of the siren, low branches snap against the high-mounted ladder. “They’ll handle it. C’mon, Mr. Skywalker.”

“Look how fast they got here,” Rey adds. “They must be prepared.”

“My father left me this land,” the stubborn old man says, still hacking into the roots of the sourgrass and bluegrass. “He burnt the Al-Daran orchards, but he left me these trees out of love.”

“The firemen are here,” Poe says, and as if on cue, the truck stops and the siren falls silent as a tall figure in a black fireman’s coat swings down the from the cab. “They’re professionals. They’ll take care of it.”

Skywalker looks up at last, and frowns. “I told them – ”

“Good evening, Luke,” says the person who got down from the truck, and Poe startles. It’s a woman. A tall, thin woman in firemen’s kit. “We’re going to need you to evacuate right now, I’m afraid.”

“I called for two trucks, Aimee Linn!” Skywalker shouts. “You’ll never get the job done with one!”

“More trucks will come,” replies the tall woman. “But I’m not here because you called for trucks. I’m here because of the storm.”

“The storm? What storm?” Poe hasn’t heard about any storm; there’s been nothing but a little breeze all day.

“In the mountains,” she says. “The pressure system that brought us the sundowner brought a storm up there.” She gestures beyond the orchard, towards the north where the foothills wait, and the mountains looming behind them. “The basins are overflowing, and the rain hasn’t stopped; the rangers are sending warnings on the emergency band. I need you to evacuate immediately; the Salsipuedes River is about to flood.”

* * *

Finn’s ready to lie on her bed and kiss her for as long as she wants, all night long, if that’s what she wants, with his arms around her waist and her hands on his chest or his shoulders or sweeping up over the shorn curve of his head. It’s true that his mouth waters and his head spins when she gasps for air and her breasts press against him. But if someone hands him cake he’s not the type to ask why there’s no ice cream; he pulls her close and tries to press the memory of her body into his, something to save and savor. But he’s not thinking, he just pulls her as tight against him as he can, and when she shifts a little her soft thigh rubs sweetly against his hard cock. He hisses, and she breathes in sharply.

Finn rolls her off to his side, shifting his mouth into an apologetic grimace. The grimace drops away when he feels her hand on him, deliberate and careful, tracing his outline through his pants. Pleasure and anger spike together inside him; has Huxley dragged her little hand over him? Part of him wants to pin her down and make her tell him everything she’s ever endured so he can hunt down anyone who’s ever hurt her. Then she squeezes him, and his back arches. She’s smiling, and what he wants most is for her to be happy, right now, as happy as he can make her. “Can I see?” she asks. 

The curiosity and mischief in her voice push his heart up into his throat, which is his excuse to himself for why his voice squeaks a little. “Sure.” _Anything you want._

He keeps his eyes on her face as he slowly undoes his belt and slowly eases his pants and underwear down. It’s hard not to feel his ego swell a little when her eyes widen. He touches himself slowly, and if his wrist pushes his shirt up a little and shows him to better advantage, he’s sure it could have been an accident. 

It’s an accident that catches her eye; she pushes his shirt up as far as she can, and when the shirt won’t move anymore, she slides her hands underneath, her cool little fingers explore his chest, tracing the lines of his stomach and brushing at his nipples. She stops there, taps gently, strokes, then pinches gently, gently, and he swallows hard and rolls his head away.

The room is dim but he could see her smile in pitch darkness. She’s bent down low, close to him. Her warm breath on his bare skin makes him squirm; he grabs her with both hands, scraping his fingers up her hips so her dress gathers high. He hates this dress. She deserves better. He can see more than halfway up her thighs when he looks down, but he doesn’t let himself look too long.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he whispers.

She closes her eyes, and one of her fingers traces a small circle over one of his ribs. “I do want to,” she says. “I do, and I should.”

“Should?”

She licks her lips. “What do you want to do?”

He tries not to knead her where he holds her. He wants to run her hair through his fingers, savor every soft handful of her body; she’s like a houri, a pearl-eyed woman from paradise. He wants to slip his fingers between her legs and pull her down on him and hear her sigh as she takes his cock. But there’s a faint little quaver in her voice that stops him.

“We don’t have to do… everything,” he says cautiously.

“I want to look at you,” she says stubbornly.

“We can do that.” He lets his fingers sink in a little. “I can take my clothes off. You want to take your dress off for me? I can… make you feel good. And you don’t have to worry.” He slides his thumbs down the bowl of her hips. “Just my hands.”

She tilts her head, and those lively curls fall across her cheek. He leans forward and presses his nose to her face, pinning her hair there, feeling the silk of the strands and the velvet of her skin. “Please let me touch you, Rose.”

She pulls away from him, and his heart sinks. He watches as she backs away, climbing to her feet. But then she reaches over her shoulder, and with a little awkward jerk, undoes the button at the back of her neck. His heart beats hard as she unzips and unbuttons, and harder as she crosses her arms and pulls the rust-red fabric up and over and off. 

Her underclothes are shabby, too; elastic shows through fabric. She peels them off as he watches, and stands, naked, a light in the darkness, shoulders back and face brave. He holds out his hands to her, but she shakes her head and points to him.

He’s already exposed, but he yanks his clothes off as quickly as he can, aware of her eyes on him. They’re both sweating; he sees it shine in the crease of his leg as he pulls down his pants, and he smells it on her, a dark and private smell. When he’s naked, she still stands for a moment, and then suddenly launches herself into his lap. He just clutches her, for a moment; she’s soft and heavy and delicious and he wants to wallow in the feeling of _having_ her.

He kisses her collarbone first, then lower, while he traces the shape of her with his palms. Waist, hip, thigh, knee. He leaves a slow scatter of kisses on her breast, wrapping an arm around her back. Her short nails scrape gently at his scalp; when he turns one hand and strokes the inside of her thigh with his fingers, her hands slide down his neck and dig into his shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” he says softly. “No, don’t worry.”

“I’m – I’m not worried,” she says. “<I’m fine.>”

There’s a tremor in her voice, and he keeps his touch light, just short of tickling, and as he finds the little curls between her legs, he keeps murmuring in a low voice, his lips against her velvety breast. _Don’t worry, no, non, non, I’ve got you, I have you, je t’ai._

Every breath of hers swells her against his mouth, and when his fingers find where she’s wet, she shudders like a tree in the wind. She’s slick as silk, and his fingers slip over her for a moment before he finds his place. He holds his hand close to her, so the light callouses at the bases of his fingers rub her where her folds meet at the top. He strokes the pads in circles around her entrance, and feels her nails bite into his back. Her head falls back, her mouth open, and he kisses the base of her throat. 

He keeps stroking, feeling her soak his fingers, opening his mouth against her skin to breathe in her little gasps, the soft _uh, uh_ noises she starts to make. His fingers are glossy with her, and he tastes the sweat on her skin. He wants to sink his fingers deeper, wants to lay her down and look at her, wants to pull her legs around his hips and fuck her, but he’s hypnotized by the circles he’s drawing and the way she bounces in his lap, bending to their rhythm.

She covers her mouth when she comes, pressing hard with both hands, and he almost bites her; he wants to eat her, swallow her down.

His fingers slide away from her, as she leans back. She gasps for a moment, staring. “I told you not to worry,” he says softly, trying not to smile too wide.

She kisses him. Her lips press hard against his, and then her hands are pressing his shoulders back. He goes readily, and then her hand closes gently around his half-hard cock. “Show me?” she asks.

He wraps his hand around hers. Gently, to begin with. Her hand is so small; her fingers so fine. He strokes harder as the pull of the pleasure gets stronger, and his eyes start to close. He’s surprised to feel her peeling his fingers gently off hers. “Like this?” 

“Yes,” he sighs, as her hand twists up and down him, and she bends to kiss his nipple. “Yes.”

Her hand is steady, determined, ruthless. Her mouth is soft and kind, her kisses placed deliberately on the sensitive edges of his flesh. His muscles tighten. “Don’t worry,” she says. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.” He shuts his eyes and bites his lip, and her free hand smooths down his chest and stomach. “I have you,” she whispers. “Leave it to me.”

She makes it last, loosening and tightening her grip, pulling him gently on. “I’m going to – don’t stop – ” he begs through his teeth. “Don’t stop – lean back – I’m going to – ”

She leans back. He looks at her heavy breasts, her bright black eyes, her hand around his cock, and lets the pleasure take him, lets himself forget everything but a beautiful naked girl in the dark who makes him come.

When he’s done, she kisses his hip and his softening cock, and fetches a soft cloth from the kitchen to wipe him clean. He lies still, watching her as she passes it over his skin, and imagines her washing it later, thinking of him.

* * *

“What about the fire?” Poe asks. The woman is already striding back to the truck, and Poe follows her. Skywalker is still fighting his way through weeds. Rey is pleading with him, but she’s helping him, too, clearing the light brush. Her dress looks filthy; there are dark stains all over her. What the hell has she been up to this time?

“We can’t fight the fire unless it spreads west, away from the river. With luck, the water level will stay high and we’ll have one side contained for us.”

“But the whole school could burn – ”

“It could,” she agrees. “But that’s not my concern right now.”

“Who are you, anyway?”

She swings herself back into the engine. “Captain Aimee Linn of the Santa Teresa VFD. This evacuation order is mandatory, sir.”

“My name’s de Marino. Wait.” He grabs the door before she can close it. “The river _might_ jump its banks. But this place _is_ on fire.”

She looks at him. She has high, strong cheekbones and short-cut hair streaked with grey. It seems to Poe that she gives him a knowing look, a look of recognition. It rubs him the wrong way, even before she says, dismissively, “I have my priorities, Mr. de Marino.”

“Well, maybe they’re bad priorities. Skywalker’s over here breaking his heart – don’t you have respect for him, at least? As a fireman?”

He didn’t really mean to stress the last syllable, but he hears himself do it. Her stare turns hard. Then she climbs back down from the truck and strides quickly back to where the old man’s still digging.

“Captain Skywalker,” she says, stern, “we have an immediate threat to human life. You are defending property. I need you to observe triage protocol.”

“A firebreak,” Luke says. His voice is harsh and ragged, as if he were already breathing smoke. “I just need a firebreak. To save the orchard. Then I’ll go.”

The lady firefighter’s mouth seals tight, and her flinty eyes move from Skywalker to Poe and back. 

“You’re impaired.” Her tone is business-like. “I’ll take over from here. Please see these civilians to safety.”

For the first time, Skywalker looks up from his work. “You can’t.”

She takes the shovel from his hand before he has time to tighten his grip, and plunges it into the ground, levering up the dusty roots of the uninvited grass. In three more moves, she has as much ground dug up as he has since he started. “Go. Save the girl, Captain Skywalker.”

Annoyance flashes over Rey’s face, and Poe can tell she’s almost ready to insist on staying and digging up the ground along with Linn. Then she turns on Skywalker. _“You_ have to talk to your sister. You _owe_ her that. Now let’s go.”

She pulls on his arm, headed for Poe’s car, and the old man follows like a reluctant colt, turning his head back to where the flames are climbing into the sky. Poe turns back to Capt. Linn. “What can I do?”

“You can evacuate. We’re talking about a flash flood, Mr. de Marino. Leave now.”

“I want to help.” He starts gathering up the light weeds like Rey had done. If Ben Solo can be alive, anything can be saved.

“You’re not a fireman. Go with the girl.”

“I flew a banshee in the war; I know how to put out fires.”

She looks up at him. Her eyes blaze, and the shovel digs viciously deep. “If you were a fireman, you’d listen to a fire captain. Go. Now.”

 _“Poe!”_ Rey yells. _“Poe, come on!”_

He wants to stay and fight, to save what can be saved, to put the world to rights. But Rey punches the horn and calls his name, and he turns and runs. If he has to leave, he’ll leave fast.

* * *

She kisses him once more. He looks up at her, dazed. She still smiling, but a little sad. “You should go.”

She’s right. It’s not like he can spend the night. But something stubborn in him is starting to stick him to her; he doesn’t want to leave her here. “You could come with me.” Her forehead creases. “Why should you stick here if the plans are destroyed? Leave. Come with me. Whatever he owes you in wages, is it worth staying here?”

The frown on her face deepens into a look of genuine pain. “I need to stay. Even if she burned the plans – they’re connected to French intelligence. They’re fighting the Dirty War. I can’t walk away.”

“Rose,” he starts to argue, but she curls in on herself, freezing into stony sadness, and he gives it up. Her sister died for this cause. What can he offer, to coax her away from it? “All right.” He sits up, and bends to kiss her shoulder. “I’ll go.”

He kisses her three times more, neck and mouth and forehead, before he really leaves, dressed again and slipping out of the kitchen, trying not to feel colder and lonelier when she closes the door behind him softly. He knows why she has to, but he can’t help feeling shut out of paradise. There’s only one light on in the house, and Finn, keyed-up with feelings he’s not looking too closely at – _death and sex and – but she shut the door; I need to leave_ – takes a little risk. He sets his path along the side of the house instead of through the garden, trusting to darkness and tomorrow’s morning dew to cover his tracks.

The house seems mostly quiet, despite the lights, but as he gets towards the back, he catches a new voice. Right – Rose had said Huxley’s father was due in. That must be him, the aging voice with the accent as plummy as his son’s. Finn can hear the scornful tone even before he can make out the words.

“You realize, don’t you, what we stand to lose through your incompetence?”

“Yes,” Huxley hisses. “Yes, Father, I understand what’s involved perfectly well. I told you; I only need a little time to free up funds. I assure you I’ve taken every step possible – ”

“So I can only conclude that you’re not even competent in asking for help. And if what your wife said is true – ”

“Why in God’s name would you listen to Phédré? You know she’s a spiteful bitch.”

“But is she wrong? I don’t believe she is.”

“I _will,_ I swear I will – .”

“I don’t value your promises highly, Armand.”

“Of course you don’t.” Bitterness spreads from their voices, father and son, like sulphur off a skunk, but nothing more is said. Finn wonders if one of them has left the room, or if they’re sitting together now in silent hatred. His mind whirls. _“I only need a little time –”_

He waits a moment, making sure nobody’s going to come to a window, and makes his way along the house to the kitchen. _Is Huxley going go down the stairs to try to put his head in Rose’s lap again?_ He feels sick to his stomach. _Her hands were on me. She kissed me. She asked for me._

_“A little time to free up funds.”_

But it’s dark and still in the kitchen; he taps on the tiny window of her room and hears the whisper of her feet as she hurries to the door. “Finn? What is it?”

“I know what happened to your sister; I know who killed her. I know where the plans are.”

* * *

It crosses his mind to go back to Maisie’s. But he can’t face her; he can’t face anyone. He can’t look behind him and there’s nothing ahead. He gets on the highway and tries to speed himself into oblivion, but it’s too early; there are still cars on the road and the last thing he needs right now is to be clocked by the sheriff. He’d try it anyway, but as soon as he gets above 60, starts to really feel the pull of it, he wants Rey’s arms around him, wants her face against his back or her legs between his and her hands on the bars, and he wants it so badly his eyes blur and his nose runs.

Her knife slashing through the paint. _If he were still alive, I’d kill him for you._ Her knife in Saito’s wrist, her little foot on his neck. Her knife in her fist in his fist. _Ben, your face –_

He gets off the freeway, and turns himself back towards Monte Vista. He keeps his eyes turned north; if there’s a fire blazing by the sea, olive trees burning like oil lamps, he doesn’t want to see it. He parks the bike in the dust behind a cluster of giant agave, and combs his hands through a dense mat of sleeping morning glories until he finds the right spot in the iron fence.

It’s a lot harder to get through than he remembers; he’s wider now, front to back as well as side to side, and there’s no give to his helmet. He falls when he finally forces himself through, his momentum and the tangle of plants that his feet sink into bringing him down together. The imported taro plants ran wild long ago, though the ground isn’t quite wet enough to support them, and some are brown and dead. He catches himself on his hands, and pushes himself to his knees, unsteady and aching.

The water of the pool is dark with night and scum, but the flowers that float on the surface are luminous in the moonlight; the red petals look semi-translucent, and the white petals seem to glow. Beyond the still and shining circle of flowers, the dark house waits.

Ben takes off his helmet and his glasses, and climbs to his feet. The cut on his face burns cold. “Hello, Grandmother,” he says. “I’m home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **VFD** — Volunteer Fire Department. Most U.S. fire departments began as volunteer operations and many still are, though currently in California most fire-fighters are either professionals paid by the state (CalFire) or semi-conscripts, semi-volunteers from incarcerated populations, who received wages considerably below minimum wage.  
>  **Firebreak** — A gap made in flammable material to try to isolate a wildfire. A large fire can jump a six-lane freeway, though, so a ditch won’t always cut it.  
>  **Houri** — A celestial maiden of paradise, as mentioned in the Quran. Comparing the girl you fancy to a houri is pretty standard in Islamic poetry, not unlike calling her an angel in Christian poetry. 
> 
> [Bougainvillea](https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thefloridalivingmagazine.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F01%2FBougainvillea.jpg&f=1&nofb=1), [sourgrass](https://www.installitdirect.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/three-varieties-of-clover-weeds-are-common-in-san-diego-768x1024.jpg), [bluegrass](https://www.installitdirect.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/annual-bluegrass-is-a-very-common-weed-in-san-diego.jpg), [blue Mexican morning glory](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Ipomoea_tricolor-1.jpg), [taro](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Songe-R%C3%A9union.JPG/800px-Songe-R%C3%A9union.JPG), [red](https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fbergenwatergardens.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F01%2FRed-Carmine-Lotus-1.jpg&f=1&nofb=1) and [white water lotus](https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fil3.picdn.net%2Fshutterstock%2Fvideos%2F2572409%2Fthumb%2F1.jpg&f=1&nofb=1).
> 
> Rose is singing [L'Internationale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale), the socialist anthem. Versions exist in many languages, including English, but the French is the original. 
> 
> To say that a child had been "interfered with" was an early-to-mid-twentieth century way to say they had been molested.
> 
> I think I mentioned flash floods in an earlier chapter. No matter where you live, if it rains there, you’ve probably been warned about flash flooding, but what Aimee is warning of is an especially dire version, since it involves not just a huge mass of water but a large and fairly abrupt change in elevation, from mountain to foothill to sea level, and it would be likely to carry with it huge quantities of debris and loose soil. As deadly as a flash flood is, a mud flow is usually worse. People die not just from impact and drowning but of suffocation. 
> 
> _Salsipuedes,_ you may recall from past notes, means _get out if you can._
> 
> (I'm sorry this took me so long; a fire has forced me to vacate my apartment for several weeks, so I've been living with my neighbors and their troublesome, if cute, cats, plus I've been preparing for a major work event all month. I would like to promise the next one will be faster... but the High Holy Days start Sunday night. Come find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/LinearAO3) or [Tumblr](http://linearla.tumblr.com) if you would like to yell at me. May you be inscribed in the Book of Life, and sealed for a good new year!)


	14. Lotus Springs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey wonders where Ben is. _How could he cut himself like that?_ And setting that fire — Poe must have seen him with the can; it’s criminal arson. Even if the American police don’t care about two dead Japanese gangsters, how can she save him from that? And the fire could easily spread; it could burn more than the orchard. She shudders, imagining each tree an oil lamp, flaming and smoking in the darkness. How can she stop it? How can she save anything, help anything? The man who should pay most for Ben’s suffering is untouchable, dead, and Ben is alive and suffering still. It’s bitter in her mouth, worse than any unripe olive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter, another invaluable read by [Bombastique](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bombastique/pseuds/Bombastique) ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/Bombastique1)).

Poe drives west. He’s doing what he’s told; he’s going away from the river and towards Rancho Esperanza. _High ground; I need high ground._

Rey exclaims when he gets off the highway too soon, pulling them up a winding road into the hills, doubling back and north. “I just want to — ” he says, and doesn’t finish the sentence until he’s yanked the car over on a lookout. “I just want to see.”

The smoke is his compass, as he jumps out of the car, a black haze billowing over the edge of the coast and the tidy dull-green patch of the trees. The sun is long gone, but the moon is bright and dull red and orange light glows inside the smoke. Are there sirens? Flashing lights? If the trucks are there already maybe they’ve turned them off. But what if Capt. Linn told them to keep the trucks away? Is she still afraid of the river?

That’s when he hears it. Rey hears it too, jerking her head towards a roar like surf without the rhythm of surf. He cranes his neck, trying to see. He can’t see anything. Or he thinks he can’t, until a streetlight goes out, and Rey gasps. A wide torrent of dark water is pushing to the sea; the cars and sheds, trees and fences, walls and roofs and pavement it throws aside come prickling to the light here and there, but the sounds of their destruction are lost under the steady, unrelenting bellow of moving water. The roar doesn’t abate; it goes on and on and another streetlight goes out, pulled under by the devouring flood.

* * *

Ben kicks and stumbles his way through the taro and the weeds, up the stone-lined path to the dark arches of the house. His face hurts. Somewhere along the way he lets the glasses drop. They crunch under his boot. _( <Take off those glasses,>_ Oka-san’s voice says. _< You’re not fooling anyone; we know you’re a foreigner.>)_ There’s a tide of dread in his stomach, high and rising. He’s set the school on fire. He’d only ever imagined the hard scrape of the match, all those years, the blaze and crackle of the first flames, the destruction of the mask his uncle so carefully preserved. Now all he can imagine is the trees burning. Donny watching the trees burn. There’s a terrible noise in his ears, thundering and snapping. He turns and stumbles through the door.

The ground floor’s always kind of been a mess, as long as he’s been coming here. Water comes up through the ground at Lotus Springs, and breaks the tile; it combines with the long warm days and the little tremors to crack the plaster off the walls. Devil’s weed comes up through the cracks, climbing over the furniture it can’t push aside. He looks around in the moonlight that streams through the dirty skylights in the hall, vaguely surprised it isn’t worse, and makes his way upstairs. He keeps hearing the roaring sound. _Maybe I really am crazy._

It’s darker upstairs, but the moon still comes through the windows, some broken, some not. He searches for the cabinet, fumbling it open in the half-light, knocking little teenage prizes to the floor — a carefully-sharpened pocket knife, a stolen book with wood-cut images of couples fornicating, a navy-issue compass, a rock with a thin vein that might be gold — before his fist closes around the bottle he stole from his father’s stash a hundred years ago. He splashes it across his cut, hissing and sputtering at the burn, trembling as cold drops roll from his chin to his collar. He licks his lips and tastes the mingled blood and whiskey.

* * *

Poe’s got his hand on Rancho Esperanza’s gate, about to close it, when he sees the Chevy coming fast around the turn, and he holds it open instead, frowning as Finn races through and up the hill, stopping with a jerk. Rey runs to him, and by the time Poe has the gate closed and makes it to them, Finn is halfway through an urgent speech. “ — can the Solo’s alert the cops? I know they’re not in the sheriff’s good books, but — ”

“Wait, what are we alerting the sheriff about?”

“That horse-trader killed Rose’s sister.” Finn licks his lips; his eyes flicker in the dark. “Paige Tico.”

“D.J.?” Rey asks, frowning. “Do you have something on him other than the money?”

“The money’s part of it, and the cigarette. Listen — the papers Rose took from Huxley, Paige was trying to take them out of the country. She had four thousand dollars in cash to make it happen. It wasn’t in her room after the murder, so unless someone got into the house, she took it out to the barn with her. She was meeting someone. Someone who knew the property. And here’s the other thing — the throat’s not easy place to shoot someone. You have to be close-range.”

“They could have been aiming for the head or the chest and gone off-target,” Poe objects.

“That’d be a real lucky shot. And the money’s not the only thing that wasn’t in her room when she died. Paige carried a gun. It wasn’t on her when I found her. Seems to me, whoever it was was somebody she was going to let get close enough that they could take the gun off her. Rose found four thousand cash behind Mrs. Huxley’s dresser this evening — ”

“Is Rose is your client?” Rey sounds pleased, which of course she would. Rey’s a soft touch, and she loves it when they go pro bono for a good cause; Finn never does. Until now. Poe remembers the pretty, glossy-haired girl with her hand on Blue Hammer’s nose, and his heart contracts a little. But Finn was lost to him no matter what.

Finn shakes Rey’s question off. “Mrs. Huxley’s tall, and Bibiana might have taken her for a man. She had Gauloises on her. But I don’t think Paige would have let her anywhere near her. If anything, she’d have fired _at her._ Plus, she has no reason to know the property. But D.J. does. Huxley thinks he can get his plans back, if he gets cash. He’s being extorted. D.J.’s getting it off with Mrs. Huxley; he might have scooped up everything Paige had in a hurry, but when he saw Huxley’s name on it, he’d have asked her about it. Found out they were valuable. He’s a grifter; he’ll squeeze money out of anything he can.”

Poe frowns to himself. There’s something — he only met the man once — “The horses didn’t like the smell of him.”

Rey’s eyes widen as she remembers. Finn nods grimly. “He must have smelled like blood.”

* * *

The burning doesn’t quit, and it’s as good an excuse as any to put the whiskey bottle to his lips and suck down the only anesthetic he’s got. He hasn’t eaten all day, and it’s a harder punch than saké; Ben feels himself start to go down. He turns and stumbles away from the cabinet with it’s pathetic spilled-out stash of his pathetic childhood, wandering the halls with the bottle in his fist. This house has no surprises for him, but he still whispers apologies under his breath when he stumbles through the door of his grandmother’s private rooms. They’re thick with dust but here, on the second floor, mostly untouched by water and weeds. He wonders if they let her take anything with her, and if she was supposed to be a danger to herself, like him. (His uncle and the doctors, opening his travel case and taking out everything with an edge.)

The sheet-covered shapes of furniture are faint ghosts in the moonlight; there’s a faint draft from where the implacable fingers of the ivy have cracked the windowpane. He pulls the sheet off the armoire, remembering at the last moment to shield his freshly-washed cut from the onslaught of dust. He gropes unsteadily at the top shelf until he finds the earthquake candles. He could stay here, curl up in the bottom of the closet with the moth-eaten clothes. He did that once, when the war started, and everybody from Uncle Luke to Paco signed up to go away. But the pretty dresses felt abandoned; they made it worse. He takes two candles one door down the hall.

The old music room has a high, arched ceiling, a gilded box waiting to be filled with her voice. The grand piano is a shadow in the dark, and he impales the candles on a sharp points that wait for them by the music stand. His fingers shake as he strikes a match to light it. (The trees will burn; all of Donny’s olive trees will burn.)

He slides the sheet off the piano bench and seats himself. The lid is hard to raise, and he knows as he brings his fingers down on the keys what he’ll get — silence. The faint, futile sound of hammers striking at nothing. He slumps down on the bench, staring at nothing among the dust and the beauty, pouring whiskey slowly down his throat, and waiting to get used to the pain.

The vault is painted dark blue, with gilded stars that show faint and shining in the candlelight. Here and there there are white lighting veins of broken plaster. He sucks the whiskey down a little faster. His father drinks whiskey. His mother drinks brandy. Rey drinks gin; that’s what was in her glass when he saw her at Maisie’s. Looking at the moon and swaying just a little to that stupid Broadway crooner who’s on every jukebox hit list. _Hey there..._ He leans sideways, and brings his finger down on the key where the note ought to be. Silence.

_Hey there; you with the stars in your eyes_  
_Love never made a fool out of you_  
_You used to be too wise._

That’s a lie; he’s never been wise, not about anything. In the morning he’ll have to tell Donny (and Kanda and Hanataka) what he’s done. It was always Oka-san’s plan to clear the land. Fire’s cheaper and easier than men with axes and saws. It’ll scare Uncle Luke off, make him sell cheap. (Unless it makes him dig in, like his mother on the Al-Darran land.) He takes a long swallow. The cut on his face aches.

_Hey there; you on that high-flying cloud_  
_Though she won’t throw a crumb to you_  
_You think someday she’ll come to you_

He’ll never see Rey again. He’s a criminal and she doesn’t want a criminal. (But she cares, she cares; the furious marks of her knife through the paint.) He’s a degenerate. His free hand slips into his coat pocket and finds her stockings. He’s no good; he’s a sick, broken brute. Look at the way he pushed her head down when she put her mouth on him. He remembers the little choking sound she made. How good it felt. He’s a low-life and he doesn’t deserve to touch her, let alone call her his doll. _(Ben, your face.)_ His face hurts. The stockings are soft, silky between his fingers. It felt so good to do it to someone else.

_Better forget her_

He can’t. He lets more whiskey run down his throat, and drags the handful of nylon across his lips.

* * *

“It’s not enough,” Poe says, biting his lip. Rey bites hers, too, mirroring him, knowing he’s probably right; of the three of them, he knows the law the best. She isn’t surprised to see Finn’s face grow stormy. The girl died in his lap, her sister’s sweet as sugar, and he may try to keep it under wraps, but Finn hates it just as much as she does when the heartless scumbags of the world get their way. He wants to see D.J. go down. 

“If the Solos tell the cops, though,” he says, stubborn.

Poe shakes his head. “The Solos and the sheriff don’t get along. D.J. and the sheriff’s boys do.”

Rey knows Finn was there when Mrs. Solo told them the sheriff was her enemy, but even so, he gestures almost imploringly. “They’ll have to at least investigate, won’t they?”

Poe shakes his head, and she looks past her arguing partners. Luke Skywalker’s still sitting in the back of Poe’s car, looking blankly ahead. She crosses to him and opens the door. He looks up at her, blue eyes distant and lost. She steps back, gesturing him out. He obeys, slowly, leaning on the car, as if he were a much older man than he is. She matches her step to his, following his slow trek to the mouth of the courtyard. Leila must have heard them pull in; she’s standing in the doorway, her hands laid flat and gracious in the generous folds of her skirt. Her brother takes a step towards her, a little figure outlined by the warm light of the house behind her, and stops.

“I can’t,” he says softly.

“You have to.”

He lowers his head. “I know.”

Rey watches him cross the courtyard. He lets his sister embrace him, standing stiffly under her arm as gestures to Rey to come in. Rey shakes her head, and Luke pulls Leila inside. Mrs. Solo casts a frowning look over her shoulder. Rey stands for a long time, looking at that open door into the light.

* * *

“You need more than that,” Poe says, for what feels to him like the dozenth time. “More leverage, or at least more proof.”

“Then I’ll _get_ more,” Finn growls, and whirls, reaching for the car door handle. Poe just barely catches him by the elbow.

“Get sleep, Finn,” he says heavily. He’s exhausted himself. They’re miles and miles from Olive Tree School, but the smell of burning eucalyptus wood is bitter in his nose. All of it — the smoke, the hellish torchlights of the fire, the roar of the flood, the lights going dark as the black snake of the wild river washed the road away, the pale shadow of the hometown hero sitting silent in the backseat, the boy who was like him and could have been dead as so many boys like them are dead but instead is fucking Rey and burning buildings — it’s too much. Finn is shaking under his hand. “Go sleep. There’s nothing to find at this hour, and you can’t find it dog tired.”

His partner stands for a moment with his hand on the door, his face set in a stony frown. Then something crumbles, and he slumps. “Yeah. Yeah, all right.”

“<Bibiana made up your rooms,>” says a voice behind them. Arturo is standing with his thumbs in his belt, looking stern and worried. It’s an expression Poe’s seen before, many times over the years, but tonight, lit by the moon and the yellow-orange windows of the big white house, he notices the deep lines in Tío Arturo’s face. He’s been away from home so long.

He and Arturo walk Finn to the house. Rey is standing in the courtyard, lingering like a ghost in her dirty white dress.

“<Mrs. Solo and her brother are… he’s talking to her,>” she says, in a confused tone. He can tell she wants to be listening in, and thinks she shouldn’t. It must be about Ben. 

“<We’ll go in the back door,>” he assures her. They leave her there, tracing the lines of the tiles in the fountain with her fingers.

When the door to Finn’s room closes, Arturo turns to him. “<You should sleep, too. Tomorrow’s a rest day for Blue Hammer, but it can’t be for you.>”

“Yes, Tío,” he says obediently, but in his bed he shifts and shivers, never quite getting warm before weariness pulls him down to dreams that he’s standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the lady fire captain, trapped between a wall of flame and a dark, monstrous tide. He wakes briefly, wondering if she’s safe, hating himself for leaving her there alone, and falls confusedly back into uneasy sleep.

* * *

The stockings smell like Rey, they’re soft like Rey, and his first urge is to tie one across his nose and mouth, to breathe her in. But on an impulse of avoiding pain he wraps it over his eyes instead, where it only touches the edges of his cut. It dims the candle to a dull glitter, and keeps the smell of her faint. He feels like a prisoner — trapped and tantalized with the smell of something he can’t have, and that feels right. He lies down on the piano bench, the stolen nylon brushing his lashes, and takes deep, slow breaths as he slowly wraps the other stocking around the palm of his hand.

The house smells as it always has, as long as he can remember, dust and green and the sweet wet smell of the lotus ponds, fed from the warm springs that bubble up from the earth. He slides his fingers in his mouth, thinking of that welling up, of Rey’s legs showing through her soaked dress, kicking in the drawing waves and parting around him, of his fingers and his face and his cock in Rey where she’s wet, where she wants him. (She doesn’t want him) Thinking of Donny, of men whose names he didn’t learn, of things he doesn’t want to think about that still make him hard. It’s confusing, he’s confused. He lets it happen, stroking his fingers against his tongue, opening his jeans with his other hand, the stolen ghost of Rey against his eyes and tight around his palm.

He closes his hand, wet and silky, around his cock and takes a shuddering breath. _Degenerate, sick little boy._ But Rey would kill for him. She said so. He imagines she’s blindfolded him like this, and that’s why he can’t see her. She’s here, but he’s not allowed to see her; she’s teasing him, testing him, tempting him. He licks his lips and lets his head fall back, breathing hard through his nose to catch the smell of her and catching blood and whiskey with it. He moves his hand slowly on himself, feeling the grain of the nylon as he strokes, not letting it bunch up.

Pretty Rey in her white dress — he dreams she’s drunk on whiskey and here in the dark with him, licking the bloody line of pain on his face, making him hurt and calling him hers. _My dirty, bad boy._ Taking him in her little hand and using him to play with herself. _Mmm, that feels good._ Just rubbing and rubbing the aching tip of him until he’s writhing, laughing at him until he gets his hands into her thighs and pulls her down on him where she ought to be; then she wouldn’t laugh; then she’d gasp and moan and scratch at him, making sweet nonsense sounds just like before, so he’d know she liked it. Wanted him inside her. And he’d pull her up and down his cock, just like he’s dragging his hand, slow and hard, until she went wild. 

She is wild, Rey. She fights and speeds and sucks his cock and lets him fuck her. (She doesn’t want him.) He moves his hand faster and grits his teeth. _She does want me,_ he insists, and to prove it to himself he imagines her touching herself for him. (She left him; she said _you.)_ He imagines she’s the one with her head thrown back, she’s the one gasping and breathing hard (he is, it’s him, not her). She wants him; wherever she is, she misses him, she’s sorry he’s not with her; her fingers rub between her legs. _Ben,_ she whispers, confessing, _Ben I wish these were your fingers; Ben, kiss me, kiss me, touch me, fuck me, make me come on your big cock; I want you to, Ben._

That’s it; that’s what’ll do it. Rey’s soft, foreign voice, telling him what he wants to hear. She’s not from here; this place can’t touch her. But he can; he’s different; she’ll let him. He can put his hands all over her. _Yes, Ben; please. Touch me. Anywhere you want. I want you to touch me. You’re not like them; you can touch me like nobody else can. You can make me come. Just you. Please, Ben. I want you so bad._

It works; it works well; he comes hard. But he’s mouthing the words to himself. She’s not really here. He’ll do this again and again, and she’ll never be here, never want him. He swipes up the scattered lines of his ejaculate with the stocking on his fist; the one around his eyes saves him from wiping any tears.

* * *

Rey waits in the courtyard of Rancho Esperanza for a long time. She waits for screaming, or shouting, or crying, or the messy sounds of struggle. Nothing comes. She waits until the moon vanishes behind the red tile. The door is still open, still full of light. Cautiously, she advances towards it.

Mrs. Solo and Mr. Skywalker are seated in the parlor. Both of them stare into the empty fireplace, silent. It seems to Rey that they must have been sitting that way for a long time. Leila’s cheeks shine with water, but she seems long done with crying. Luke’s back is to her; neither of them turns or gives any sign they hear or see her, but they shift, as if her presence stirs something in the air.

“It’s my fault,” Mrs. Solo says. Rey strains to hear. She shouldn’t listen in (but it’s her job, but they trust her, but it’s about Ben, but she wants to hear). “I’ve always known. I never should have believed you. I was afraid of something in him, but it wasn’t insanity.”

“Our mother — ”

“But was she?” Leila’s voice is bitter and soft. “All these stories hang on that. That she was really mad. But it gave him all her money when he signed those papers.”

“He loved her,” Luke protests. “You must know that; I’ve shown you the letters. He loved her terribly.”

“And you think, because he loved her, he would never sign her life away for a lie?” She shakes her head and rises. Rey can see Luke’s frown in the set of his shoulders. Leila raises her eyes, and they meet Rey’s. Her voice carries. “Luke. You have no idea what it’s like to be a woman loved by a man.”

Her tread on the stairs is crisp; her heels sound on the tile of the second floor and fade away. Luke sits in frozen silence in his chair, and Rey wonders if Leila’s words echo in his ears the way they do in hers. She imagines Leila walking to her bedroom, to the bed she shares, and wonders what it’s like to be Han Solo’s wife, what Han has sacrificed to his lies. She wonders what Leila knows, or can guess, about what Rey has seen and done today.

* * *

Finn does sleep. Not immediately. The memory of Rose’s body is warm on him like sunshine, but the memory of Rose’s face burns in his chest. Her face, slowly hardening as he explained, laid it all out for her. _I’ll take care of him,_ he’d said, and he hasn’t. He will, though; he will. But her face troubles him. He had expected the anger and the grief. But there was calculation there, too. What will she do, with what he told her?

He tosses, imagining her arrested, D.J.’s blood on her hands. Huxley wouldn’t save her from that. She’d go to jail. She doesn’t belong in jail.

 _She belongs with me, _a small voice says. Which is nonsense. He has a room in a house with Poe and Rey. They barely make enough for rent. _I could save. She could work for someone better than the Huxleys.___ But it’s nonsense. She doesn’t belong with him.

 _Why shouldn’t she?_ the voice asks, stubbornly. _She fits so easily against me. She kisses me so sweet. I could take care of her. She could take care of me. We could care for each other._

It’s nonsense; he knows it is. She says she’s a soldier; he’ll never be a soldier again.

But terrible things happen to soldiers, and nothing terrible should happen to Rose. She should be safe. She should be well. _She should be with me, here with me. She called me handsome; she kissed me, touched me like that._ He touches his chest, where she touched him. He’s tired. If she were here with him, he wouldn’t worry. If she were here with him, he’d go right to sleep.

He dreams they sit together in a sunny courtyard, and he writes their names together in the dust. _Rose,_ he says in his dream, and she smiles, and walks away. Flowers bloom where she steps. But she’s gone.

* * *

Rey walks the halls. Her dress is filthy, bloodstained; she should change. She should think about the empty house in the hills, two dead men on the floor, and the gun in Ben’s hands. She should sleep. She should eat. Instead she goes up the stairs to the library, and crosses to the east windows, staring at the red glow of the fire. She’s seen things burn before. Houses, city blocks, whole villages. Olive groves.

“It’s very late,” says a reproving voice. She jumps. Pío Modales in frowning at her; behind him is a faintly-lit corner she hadn’t noticed.

“I wanted to look at the fire.”

“Another fire?” His eyes are wide and frightened. 

“Not close,” she says, holding out her hand. He lived through a fire here. He could have lost everything. He shouldn’t have to be afraid again. “In Monte Vista. There’s water in the river. A whole flood. The fire won’t come here.”

“Oh,” he says, relieved, and then, solemnly, “oh. How awful. We must pray for the good fortune of the firemen. St. Florian, you know.” She nods, absently, her eyes turning back to the fire. “Are you a Catholic, Miss Jaffa?”

“No.” The stolen trees, and the portrait of the monster on the wall. All of it burning.

“Perhaps a Copt, then? I believe Francisco suggested to me that you were in fact from Jaffa.”

It’s a dangerous question, what he’s asking; it has been life or death to her more times than she can count. But that was in Jaffa. “I’m a Jew,” she says, watching the terrible light that warms the night sky. “I wasn’t born in Jaffa. My parents sent me there. And then I came here, because there was a war, because it seemed like everything was an injustice built on another, older injustice, and everyone was ready to spill blood for them, these old injustices, and they _were_ unjust, but so was the killing, and the people who started it were far away or dead but everyone went on paying the price for their sins and I thought it would be different here, but it isn’t. I wish there were just one place, just _one corner_ of the world where I could go, where it wasn’t blood on blood on blood!”

She throws out her hands. She hadn’t meant to raise her voice, but it spilled out of her. Pío smiles at her sadly. “I fear there is no such corner of the world, Miss Jaffa. It reminds me, you know, of a periodical I once read — do you speak French, Miss Jaffa?”

“No.” She might have. If there hadn’t been a war. If she’d grown up in peace, in Warszawa, she might have gone to school, and learned French from a textbook and a schoolmaster. Instead of English from soldiers and Arabic from the streets.

“I believe the original was in any case in German. The author proclaimed that — here, perhaps I can find it — ”

He vanishes between the shelves. Rey wonders where Ben is. _How could he cut himself like that?_ And setting that fire — Poe must have seen him with the can; it’s criminal arson. Even if the American police don’t care about two dead Japanese gangsters, how can she save him from that? And the fire could easily spread; it could burn more than the orchard. She shudders, imagining each tree an oil lamp, flaming and smoking in the darkness. How can she stop it? How can she save anything, help anything? The man who should pay most for Ben’s suffering is untouchable, dead, and Ben is alive and suffering still. It’s bitter in her mouth, worse than any unripe olive.

“Here,” Pío says with satisfaction. “The author says — ah, that ‘we must picture the angel of history with his wings spread. His face, it is turned towards the past. And that what he sees is not a chain of events, as we see, but one single catastrophe which continually piles wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel, he would like to stay, to awaken the dead, and to make whole again that which has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm propels him irresistibly into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris which is before him grows skyward.’ Rather like your ‘blood on blood on blood.’ The author is your co-religionist, I believe. Perhaps it inclines you to a common view.”

Rey doesn’t answer. She watches the small red glow, and feels like the whole world will burn, and she can’t prevent it.

“It does sound rather grim, I suppose,” Pío says, and then his hand closes gently on her shoulder. “But you must not be too melancholy, Miss Jaffa. It is rather a long and scholarly essay, but it is not entirely in the vein of catastrophe. He says, too, you know, that a sun is rising in the sky of history. And it seems to me, Miss Jaffa, that perhaps the angel cannot stop, but perhaps we, poor mortals, can. If only for a little while. For the little time that is given us. Would you like my help, my dear, in going down the stairs? I fear it’s very late.”

* * *

Ben’s drifting off when the sound of footsteps yanks him awake. He stuffs Rey’s stockings back into his pocket and takes out the gun. He stalks down the hall, listening. One set of footsteps. Probably Donny then. But maybe not. He cocks the gun. “<Who’s there?>” he shouts sternly, trying not to stumble on the stairs. He’s drunk, and Donny’s told them where to find him. He may as well shout. “<What do you mean, disturbing me like this?>”

“<Hello!>” says a woman’s voice. “Je veux dire, <sorry, sorry,> ôi, ôi không, ôi không, oh...”

She’s standing at the edge of the lotus pond with a bundle clutched in her arms. Asian, but whatever she’s trying to say in Japanese, she doesn’t know how to say it, and when she sees him she jumps, her whole little body bouncing like a rabbit’s. But she doesn’t make a move to go; she stands her ground.

They stare at each other for a minute. Her eyes flicker over him, and he realizes he’s clutching both the gun and the whiskey bottle. A flash of embarrassment takes him; he must look like a lunatic. But he is a lunatic. He raises the gun a little, not pointing it at her, but drawing attention to it. “<Who are you, and what are you doing here?>”

“My — my Japanese is very bad,” she says, in faintly-accented English. She sounds a little British, and he thinks of Rey, as if all the not-actually-English girls with English accents might come from the same place. There’s something like Rey, too, in the way she raises her chin. “My name is Thai Cô Hoa. I think you knew my sister, Thai Cô Bê. She rode in American races as Paige Tico.”

He frowns. His head is liquor-fuzzy. “Paige Tico.” _The girl jockey,_ Rey said. That’s why she hadn’t wanted to come with him, because the girl jockey was dead, and it was Fāsuto Ōdā’s fault.

“You’re — Fāsuto Ōdā?”

“Yes,” he says, shifting his grip on the gun. 

“I think my sister — ” She licks her lips. “I think my sister had a deal with you. With an agent of yours. But he broke the deal. If you can keep it, I can pay.” She half-proffers the bundle she carries, and then snatches it back. “This isn’t all of it. There’s more. I won’t hand it over all at once.”

“Smart of you,” he says. “Not to carry it all on you. What was the deal?”

“I need to get to Hanoi. I need to get there without showing my papers. I need to get there with some… letters. And I need to get there fast.”

“You want to be smuggled.”

“Yes.” She swallows hard. “That is what I want.”

It’s a thing they do, Fāsuto Ōdā. Smuggle people. He knows that. Mostly men. Mostly workers. Mostly Zainichi. It’s a way they make money. And he needs to show them, Kanda and Hanataka and probably Donny, too, that he can make money for them just as well as Oka-san could. Better. He knows how this town works. He’s burning the orchard. He’s clearing the land. All Donny’s trees are burning, and the girl jockey is murdered. “How much money?”

“Four thousand. That was the deal my sister had.”

The number sends a dull chill through him. “Your money. Let me see it.”

Reluctantly, she unwraps the bundle of cash and hands it to him. It’s dark, and he has to hold it close to his face, but it’s easy enough to see the lines he painted himself up the sides of the bills.

“This money’s no good to me,” he says. Her eyes go wide. “Where did you get this?”

“Why do you care?” She takes a step back, her heels against the mossy stone edge of the lotus pond.

“Tell me where you got it. I don’t care if you stole it; I don’t give a fuck if you stole it. But tell me where you got it.”

Her face twists, with fear and with something else. Hatred, he thinks. “Donato Jimenez. He gave it to his mistress and I took it from her.” She braces herself, fighting. “He killed my sister. But get me to Hanoi in time with what I need to take, and I won’t — I won’t say anything to anyone.”

He knew it. He knew D.J. didn’t buy and sell any fucking horses. He didn’t do a damn thing to clean their money. He just killed the jockey and took her cash. Rey said. _It’s blood money. A woman died for it._

“We don’t do a lot of business with Hanoi,” he says, and decocks the gun.

“Get me to the home islands, then,” she says stubbornly. “The Zengakuren will help me.”

“I could get you to Heijo. Pyongyang.” The flow doesn’t go that way. They take the men from Korea, and they take them to Japan and Hawaii and California. (And what do they do there? They work for nothing. He knows.) But it could be done, to take a woman to Korea. “But you don’t have the money. That money’s dirty, and it was ours to start with.”

He stuffs it in his pocket. D.J. may be worthless, but the scheme is still good. He can still make it work. Still be worth something.

“If I get other money,” she says desperately.

“The other money’s dirty too. Check the edge for the marking.”

“No, other-other money. Clean money. If I can get you a clean four thousand. Will you get me to Hanoi.” He hesitates. The money — “Are you Ben Solo?”

 _“What?”_ It comes out a strained squeak. _No,_ he thinks, staring over her shoulder at the pond full of flowers, _no, I’m Ren; I’m Fāsuto Ōdā’s man._ But he can’t say it; he just goggles. Who is she? How does she know?

She half-turns away from him, and one of her hands slides back to brush the petals of a floating blossom. “Your mother was kind to me,” she says, looking at him sideways.

“What are you doing here?” he demands.

“You can see this place from my employers’ terrace.” She says _employer_ like a poisonous curse. “My sister used to light the light in the window when she stayed here. One light if I should come talk to her. Two if I should stay away. When she was meeting with someone else.” Her hand closes around a flower, crushing the heavy petals. “People here have been kind to me. Your mother. A girl called Rey. A man called — a man has been very kind to me. I have… learned some things. Figured some things out.”

 _It’s blood money, Ben. A woman died for it. I held her sister’s hand while she cried._ He can’t be free of it, of Rey and her kindness and the way it tears at his heart. She would kill for him. But she wouldn’t come with him. And this girl is looking at him, level and sharp.

“Hanoi.”

“That’s right. Hanoi. Will you get me there?”

“Why do you want to go?” What’s in Hanoi? Rubber?

She looks at the flowers. “Why do you call it Fāsuto Ōdā? Why not First Order, or the real Japanese words?”

“The old empire was based in the home islands. Oka-san was going to make a new one. In the new world. But not bending to the Americans. Take the English and Nipponize it. Make them bend to Japanese.”

“Like the Americans bent the Japanese who lived here.” She plucks the flower up out of the water. “I don’t want anyone to have to bend, Ben. Not the Japanese. Not the Americans. Not anyone. I want to go to Hanoi so the country where I was born will never have to bend again. Did you hear the flood, before?”

“The flood?” he asks blankly.

“The roads are out. There’s water in the Salsipuedes River again. The world is changing. The world will change. If I bring you four thousand dollars in clean money, will you take me to Hanoi?”

The river is back. The river that ran through Olive Tree School; the river where he’d meant to dispose of Ben Solo forever.

“Yes,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **je veux dire** — French, "I mean."  
>  **ôi không** — Vietnamese, "oh no."  
>  **Zainichi** — Term for ethnic Koreans working in Japan or in Japanese territory, where they are often subject to discrimination and mistreatment.  
>  **Zengakuren** — Japanese student communist movement.
> 
> The book Ben knocks out of the cabinet, of dirty woodcuts, is probably [shunga,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunga) perhaps stolen from Donny's father as the whiskey was stolen from Han.
> 
> The angel of history who presides over wreckage is the creation of Walter Benjamin, a German Jewish philosopher who killed himself at the French border after being refused transit in his flight from the Nazis. What Pío reads is probably the most famous passage from his _Theses on the Philosophy of History,_ which he did not want published, but which circulated in mimeograph copy thanks to Hannah Arendt, and appeared in print in French translation in 1949, in the journal _Les Temps Modernes_. It was not translated into English until 1968, but Pío's on-the-spot translation bears a strong resemblance to the one which can be found [here.](https://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/CONCEPT2.html)
> 
> Extra-extra thanks to Bombastique for tactfully saving me from my own idiocy by suggesting a diagetic explanation for the name "Fasuto Oda."
> 
> I am at present a person of no fixed address; please forgive me if I am a little slow with this in days to come.


	15. A View of the Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s no point in showing off if you don’t get to see your audience react, so Poe sneaks a glance at Rey. But she’s vanished. He turns his head further, looking for her, and that’s when he sees him, headed for the barn, the tall black-haired man in the black leather jacket. Ben Solo. 
> 
> The vivid picture of last night returns to him: Leila’s son, lit by flames, throwing down a can of turpentine. _If he’d do that to his uncle, what would he do to his father?_ He’s headed for the barn. The barn, full of hay and wood-shavings and dry bags of alfalfa – and valuable, vulnerable horses, all of them but Blackbird trapped in their boxes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read again by the gracious [Bombastique](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bombastique/pseuds/Bombastique) ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/Bombastique1)). It took me so long to write this my eyes were crossing trying to re-read it, so heaven knows I needed it.

Ben doesn’t sleep. He wants to; he’s exhausted and he had whiskey on an empty stomach. As the light gets paler and paler he wanders to a grand old standing mirror with a wooden frame and scrubs the dust away with his hand.

 _Dangerous,_ he instructs his face. _Powerful, unpredictable underworld boss._ His reflection stares back, red-eyed. _Killer, arsonist. Everything he touches, he destroys._ He takes out the gun. Yes. That’s true. _The river is back and I will get out. I will make it out of this._

He leaves before he can meet his own eyes again and recognize the lie.

* * *

Poe wakes up in the first grey moments of dawn. Finn is in the doorway. “What? What is it?”

“I have to go check on my client,” Finn says. Poe can tell he’s trying to sound business-like, as if he hadn’t admitted that his former quarry is now his client. As if Poe doesn’t know there’s no money in this for him. As if Poe doesn’t know he’s only up this early to sneak around Huxley. As if Poe can’t read the iron-hard look in his eyes, even in the dim light.

But all he does is nod, and point to the edge of Finn’s lip. “Got a bit of shaving cream.”

Finn flicks it off with a business-like thumb as he turns away, vanishing into the early morning light.

* * *

Because it’s early, Finn goes a little over the limit on the residential roads. It’s not like he has anything new to report to Rose. _I dreamt about you._ But he does want to check on her. _I dreamt you were leaving._ Maybe she’s leaned something about where D.J. might be stashing the plans. He hopes she hasn’t done anything too drastic. He knows she’s devoted to the cause, but she’s stuck in that house with Huxley, who’s some kind of creep, and his wife, who’s having it off with a murderer and probably knows it. Anything could have happened in that house overnight.

Of course, she’s not expecting him. That might make things a little difficult. He takes his foot off the gas, and it’s a good thing he does, because the long nose of a Jaguar saloon car cuts in front of him in an illegal left turn, just avoiding Finn’s front fender. He punches the horn, but if the other driver hears him, he doesn’t let it show. Finn gets a glimpse of him through the windscreen — wild eyes, white skin. Red hair.

It’s Saturday morning.

Finn makes a sober, orderly right turn, getting out of Huxley’s line of sight, and then yanks the wheel around. Rey’s going to murder him for what he’s just done to the tires.

* * *

Poe doesn’t go back to sleep; he can hear the rumble of Arturo’s tractor, smoothing the dirt in the ring. He may as well face the music. Though his back and thighs object, loudly, as he levers himself out of bed.

There’s a bag of carrots where there’s always been a bag of carrots, inside a galvanized steel bin outside the door to the tack room, and he pockets one. Blue Hammer will be resting today, with Bibiana standing by to press cold bandages to her legs, and Arturo will probably want him riding one of her feistier cousins, but Poe has a debt to pay.

Blackbird stomps her feet when he approaches, and puts her head up over her box to sniff at him. “Hey girl,” he says. “Don’t suppose you’d be interested in a carrot… ”

Big yellow-white teeth chomp down on the carrot the instant it appears in his palm, hot horse breath warming his hand. Blackbird’s head bobs delightedly as she crunches her treat, and when she’s done he slips into her box so she can check his pockets for more as he pats her. Blackbird is Blue Hammer’s aunt, Falcon’s last foal; Han always favored her for a runner, until the war came and put a temporary stop to racing. They’d tried to turn her out as a broodmare, then, but the Esperanza bloodline wasn’t so famous in the '40s, and according to his mother’s letters, none of the few stallions Han could find met her standards; nothing took. But Poe was there when she was born; he remembers her a wet and shaking colt. He’s glad Han never had the heart to sell her. 

“Remember me, girl?” he asks, petting her high shoulder. She’s sleek, true black, deep-chested and slim, with powerful hindquarters, and she gives a disappointed snort at his empty pockets, but curves her neck to let herself be stroked, and briefly lays her fine soft cheek on his shoulder. He was always her favorite. 

It won’t take too long to just take her for a little ride. It’s a warm-up, that’s all.

* * *

Finn doesn’t know what he was expecting — an office, or the docks, or another trip to that ghastly Victorian house full of corpses — but it wasn’t a low-rent greasy-spoon. Still, it works for him. He parks his car on the street, near the intersection in case he needs a hasty turn. He shucks off his hat and coat, and heads for the back.

The kitchen staff has the radio tuned to a station playing Luis Aguilar, the brass softened by static. The two cooks have their backs to him, but the dishwasher, a young man with dirty water running down his muscular forearms, looks up and frowns. “What do you want? The manager’s out front.”

“How much does your busboy get an hour?”

“Seventy-five. What, you think we got good jobs here?”

“Call him back here, would you?”

The dishwasher’s frown deepens, but he leans away from the sink, and hollers, “Ey! Cuco!”

Finn’s counted out the change and as the skinny kid comes charging in, swiping his long hair out of his eyes, he drops it into the kid’s hands. The kid looks down at the three quarters and then up at him. “What goes on?”

“That’s an hour’s wages, right? There’s a fellow out there I want to keep an eye on. I’ve bought your time; have a smoke, Cuco, and let me do your job for a bit.”

The dishwasher sucks air through his teeth. “There are cops out there, pal. Don’t start trouble.”

“No trouble,” Finn says. “On my honor.”

The busboy closes his fist over the quarters and offers up his rag. Finn throws it over his shoulder and rolls up his sleeves.

* * *

Rey slept in her underthings, and the thought of putting her filthy dress, stiff with seawater, stained with blood, and smeared with smoke, back on her body turns her stomach. She rummages in the trunk at the foot of the bed and comes up with a white circle skirt that looks like it belongs on a date with a zoot suit, and a man’s shirt new enough to be wash-and-wear. The skirt sits higher on her than she thinks it was meant to, but she ties the tails of the shirt at the waist and rolls up the sleeves and hopes it looks deliberate.

She expects the kitchen to be empty, but it’s not. Leila is sitting there, staring at the white-washed wall. Her hair runs down her poker-straight spine in a single braid; stray hairs are curling away at the base of her neck. Her brown eyes are bloodshot.

Rey puts her foot down to make her heel click, and Mrs. Solo’s head turns just enough to see her.

“I haven’t told Han yet.” Her voice is scratchy, uneven. “I though I’d give Luke a chance to get out of the house first.”

Rey just nods.

“He told you,” Leila says, and her voice seems to wobble out of control. “Ben told you.”

Rey just nods again.

 _“Me,”_ Ben’s mother cries, and her voice is wild and etched with bitterness and pain, “he told Luke; he told you; he should have told _me;_ why didn’t he tell _me?”_ Rey opens her mouth, though she doesn’t know what to say, and Mrs. Solo makes a terrible sound and rises to her feet. “I know,” she whispers, and her hands open and close. “I betrayed him. How could he trust me? I let them do it; I let them lock him up.” She brings both fists down on the counter so hard that the oranges jump in their basket. “I let them take my son away from me; I just stood there and watched it happen and told myself that I was doing the right thing!”

Her eyes are wet. She trembles. Rey doesn’t know what to do. “Would you — please sit down, Mrs. Solo. I can make you breakfast.”

“No,” Leila says. And suddenly her voice is steady, and she wipes her hands briskly on her rumpled skirt. “You’re my guest. I can at least make toast. I’m glad you were able to find some clothes that worked for you.”

Rey remembers the trembling mouth and steady hand that shot two men in an empty house is the hills, and nods. His mother’s son. “Thank you.”

* * *

Arturo, getting down from his tractor, clutches his hat in irritation as Poe and Blackbird hurry past him on their way to the ring. Poe just laughs; she’s almost dragging him. “Nobody’s let you have your fun in a while, have they, girl?” She dances foot-to-foot as he opens the ring and leads her in, and barely waits for him to have his seat before she’s off.

He leans close to her neck, letting both of them get the feel of it again. He can see her happiness in her ears and her eager head, but he can feel it, too, in her stride, in the playful way she sets her feet. She’s a little stiff, sure; she’s practically an old lady in horse years. But she’s glad to see him, and she remembers what he likes, what he always wanted: to go fast, to ride for thrills. She wants it too. He practically has to hold her back.

They’ve made two circuits when Poe looks up to see that’s Rey’s perched herself on the edge of the ring, her feet on the bottom beam of the fence, leaning in to watch them with a smile. He pulls up beside her and Blackbird grumbles until Rey offers up a fragment of apple on her palm. _Then_ she’s willing to dally a little, especially after Rey croons some compliments and pats her in her favorite spots. She looks up to Poe, then, and her smile fades a little. “Mr. Skywalker’s leaving, but he made some calls. They got the fire contained. They say they stopped it at the road. The flood helped them.”

“Thank God,” Poe sighs.

Rey looks down at the dust. “Capt. Linn is in the hospital.”

He swears. “I shouldn’t have left her; I shouldn’t have let her stay there alone — ”

“She ordered you to go,” Rey says, and Rey has sense and he should listen to her, but his stomach is heavy with dread. “They said she narrowed the path of the fire and made it easier to extinguish. But she inhaled a lot of smoke, and tore a muscle running from the flood.”

“I should visit her.” He starts to dismount.

“It’s not even 800 hours, Poe.” She’s right. They won’t let him in if he goes now. “Take your pretty horse for another turn.”

So he does. He’s never been above showing off, and he’s happy to let Blackbird show off, too. So he gives her her head and puts his heels into her, and his girl takes off like a shot, rushing around the ring as she must have a thousand times on Arturo’s lunge-line as a colt, as she’d done with Poe himself on her back, full of vinegar and bright hope in 1944.

There’s no point in showing off if you don’t get to see your audience react, so he sneaks a glance at Rey. But she’s vanished. He turns his head further, looking for her, and that’s when he sees him, headed for the barn, the tall black-haired man in the black leather jacket. Ben Solo.

The vivid picture of last night returns to him: Leila’s son, lit by flames, throwing down a can of turpentine. _If he’d do that to his uncle, what would he do to his father?_ He’s headed for the barn. The barn, full of hay and wood-shavings and dry bags of alfalfa — and valuable, vulnerable horses, all of them but Blackbird trapped in their boxes.

“No!” he screams, and drags Blackbird’s head, turning her to the gate. He left it open. If he can make it — the hay will catch so fast — if he can’t stop him he can get some horses out, maybe all of them if Rey and Arturo help — _Bibiana is in the barn —_

 _“Bibi, salí! Fuego, Bibi; fire; run! Bibi, get out, get Han! Fire! Fire!”_ She can’t hear him — she can’t possibly hear him — he’s got no breath; he can barely hear himself — 

Rey saw him first; she’s ahead of him, running straight for Ben. But Ben jumped at his first scream, and at his second, he’s veering, changing course. Have they scared him off? But Rey doesn’t stop running; she angles her body, leaning into her speed and throwing her arm up, her old signal from the first days he met her, and Poe, from pure habit, obeys: he leans into Blackbird and as the horse thunders along beside her, he reaches down and seizes her by the waist, dragging her up.

No sooner is she up then she’s yanking on poor Blackbird’s mane. “Catch him! We have to catch him!”

“What’s he doing? Where’s he going?” If he’s running away — if he isn’t going to hurt Bibiana or the horses — 

“Go. Please. Catch him.” And Blackbird has always been sensitive, and Rey’s voice is so nakedly desperate; she’s putting on speed before he’s even touched her with his heels. There’s two of them, to slow her down, but Ben is just a tall man with a head start; how far can he get?

 _Pretty far, maybe,_ he thinks, when he sees the motorcycle Ben is headed for. But Rey stays pitched forward, begging Blackbird for speed, and Poe has to trust her, has to lean with her.

Ben doesn’t look behind him as he starts the bike, but he must be able to hear them, Blackbird’s hooves hammering the hard ground outside the ring. He’s unsteady on the uneven ground, but it’s not that far to the asphalt of the driveway; if he makes it there before they catch him, they’ll lose him, and how does Rey mean to stop him, anyway? Poe can tell just by looking that the bike is fast, and Ben isn’t wasting any time kicking it into gear. Blackbird’s not young. She can’t keep this up.

But Blackbird is Falcon’s daughter. She’s never been brought into a chute by a groom, never heard a crowd roar at the track, never crossed a finish line. But she was made for this one thing: she was born and bred and trained to race. Poe feels the power in her stride, and feels the way Rey is shifting her weight, pulling Blackbird a little to Ben’s left, and understands, with some horror: Blackbird doesn’t have to keep it up. All Rey wants is one second. And Blackbird’s going to give it to her.

He reaches out to put his arm around her, to stop her, but it’s too late; her foot is over his in the stirrup and her hand is braced on Blackbird’s neck. She leaps.

The bike lists hard to the right, and Poe thinks, for a horrified moment, that they’ll crash, right here, unhelmeted, going forty miles an hour straight into the ground. But at the last moment Rey seems to drag Ben’s weight up, pulling on his jacket with both hands, and he punches the gas; the motorcycle slaloms on a terrifyingly tight axis, hits the asphalt, and comes straight.

The bike slips through the little gap in the gate, Rey clinging fiercely to Ben, her skirt hiked up and pinned between her body and his. Blackbird slows, and turns to look at the courtyard of the house, where Han comes running, wild-eyed and haggard. “Fire? Paco, where’s the fire?”

Poe, looking after the bike, sees the ugly stripe of smoke rising down the coast from Olive Tree School.

* * *

There are cops in the diner: two deputies are having coffee at the counter, tapping their cigarettes in the little black plastic ashtray between them, and occasionally glancing around with heavy-lidded eyes. Finn mops the dirty tables with military thoroughness. Huxley’s copper hair is a beacon, stationed across from D.J.’s slouch hat; Finn keeps his head down and plots a path towards the booth where they’re sitting. Over the clinks and clatters of the diner, he strains to make out their voices.

“Do you think I keep money stuffed in my mattress?” Huxley sneers. “If you’re so desperate for cash, don’t make your demands on Fridays.”

Finn risks a glance in the direction of the booth. A portfolio lies on the table between them. Finn thinks he sees a dark splattered stain on the leather; his stomach turns. He could try to get one of the waitresses to distract them, give him a chance to grab it and run. But two men by the door leave, and he has cover to keep up if he’s going to get that far. He rushes the plates to the kitchen as fast as he can, and scoops up a set of clean flatware. (Cuco is reading a comic book by the doorway.) He lays the place settings down soundlessly, listening.

“ — plenty of things you could use,” D.J. is saying. “Deeds, say. Or I know — I could babysit your housemaid for a few days, how about that? Just ‘til you can pay up.”

Finn drops the last knife on the table and slams his hand down on it to silence the clatter. _Huxley wouldn’t. Would he? His father wants the plans._ He remembers the photo Huxley gave him: the cruel-faced old man in the rattan chair, there at the center. He doesn’t dare turn around — it’ll only draw more attention to the noise he’s made, and they’ve both seen his face. His shoulders are taut as barbed wire and his hold on the rag is murderous.

“Listen to me carefully,” Huxley says. His voice is a quiet hiss. “You. You are going to get up from this table and go. You are going to leave these stolen documents with me. You will not ever attempt to contact me again. And in return, I will not fire the pistol I currently have pointed at your stomach.” There’s a harsh sound. A chunk of metal hitting the underside of a formica table.

“Maybe,” D.J. says coolly. “Maybe not. You don’t think I’m dumb enough to bring the plans with me, do you? This is just the case.” Finn bites his lip, and weaves an awkward path to an empty table closer to them. So much for his plan. “And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this diner’s real popular with law enforcement. Not the place I’d choose to shoot a man, personally.” Huxley mumbles a curse. Spilled coffee soaks into the dirty cleaning rag and Finn thinks of Paige’s blood soaking through his white jacket.

* * *

Ben can’t breathe. Her arms barely go all the way around him, but he’s choking, gasping for air. He swerves erratically, as if he could shake her off without killing them both, and drives blindly faster and faster, making the clutch scream as he lurches through the gears. She’s shouting at him, but he speeds up and loses her voice in the wind. He can’t bear to listen.

How can she do this to him? Act like he’s worth something to her and then leave him alone in the ruins of all his stupid daydreams, then try to do it all again? _Nothing terrible ever happens only once. It keeps happening over and over again, and I can’t ever get away._

He accelerates again, taking the old roads, the empty ones. She pulled a knife on four men for him; she went to Olive Tree School and scratched up the memorial. But she won’t stay with him. She wants justice for him but she doesn’t want _him._ Why should she? She could have anybody she wanted. He’s no good, even as a criminal; he can’t pull off any kind of scheme. His only talent is destruction and he can’t harness it. He’s everything his grandfather was, but worse, clumsier, and he can’t ever get away from it.

Rey’s arms go loose at his sides and cold panic strikes him — if she falls off she’ll die. His hand drops off the gas. But then her arms are there again, wrapped around his shoulders; she’s climbing up his back to shout in his ear, making the bike top-heavy. He tenses his fingers on the brake. 

_“I know,”_ she shouts, and the wind makes her voice sound far away even though he can feel the warmth of her through his jacket. _“I know, Ben. It feels like you can’t escape. I know! But Ben — Ben stop, Ben, listen to me!”_

He doesn’t want to stop. If he stops he won’t just be helpless, he’ll feel it. He has to keep going, or he’ll drown. But he looks down for a just a second, and sees her narrow fingers, clutching him so tight there’s no blood left in them, and he stops.

She doesn’t let him go, or get off the bike. She clings to his shoulders and he stares at wherever it is they’ve pulled up. “I know,” she says in his ear, soft and fierce. “Everything’s blood on blood on blood. And you can’t ever undo it.” A fence; there’s a chainlink fence where they’ve stopped, with morning glories just like the ones at Lotus Springs. They’re still open, round and blue. A nursery, he thinks, on the other side; he can see the tidy rows of planting stakes over the top of the fence. “You can’t ever escape it.”

“I can’t.” It feels like he hasn’t spoken in fifty years. She lays her hand on his arm, white sleeve falling over her wrist, and he realizes her knees are around him too. He remembers her skirt fluttering like a flag in the corner of his eye. For a moment the childish part of him, the part that lures him out to sea with stupid dreams, lingers over the thought of how they must have looked, with her bare legs and flying skirt and his black jacket and his Black Knight, like the three-color cover of a science fiction pulp. Like the hero and his doll. But he’s not the hero; he’s the Creature from the Black Lagoon. He gets to hold the girl a while. And then they fill him full of lead and he sinks down into the dark. “It won’t be long, Rey.”

“What won’t be long?”

“I made my choice; I’ve got my hand and I’ve got to play it.” The thought of it — of how his game is bound to end — rises up like a wave in his mind. “I can’t deliver. I can’t make them happy.” He was dreaming, to think he could. The hopelessness crashes over him and he bows forward with the strength of it. “I thought I could bring them money, that that would keep them happy, and I could keep going with the plan, cut the horse trader out of it, show them I could do everything Oka-san was going to. But I got there and I couldn’t even think; I did everything wrong; I went for the horses first, instead of the trailer — like I could ride them away — ”

Her hand strokes through his hair. He doesn’t deserve it, the sweetness of that feeling. “You were trying to steal horses? For the money-laundering scheme?”

He nods. Just a little; her fingers keep running through his hair, tidying it; he doesn’t want her to stop. “I was going to put my bike in a trailer and load up some horses and — but I — it messed me up, just being there, and you were watching Blackbird run and — ” 

“Ben, Ben.” Her mouth is at the nape of his neck; her sighs are warm and her lips brush his skin. He swallows hard to keep down the rising sob. 

“Let me go, Rey.” He breathes deeply. When they come for him — the wakagashira or the sheriff or whoever gets him — he’ll remember this, her warm against his back. “I know you tried. But it’s time to give up on me.”

She yanks on his collar with so much force it actually jerks him, and the bike almost goes over. _“Give up?”_ She scrambles off the back of the bike, so he can see her snarl, her bared teeth. Her hair is wild and she is beautiful and it hurts him, that she should care. “You think I should just give up?”

“I know you don’t want to. But it’s just like your parents. You thought you could get them out, and you think you can get me out. And that’s not hope, doll. That’s delusion.”

* * *

Poe grooms Blackbird himself, as Bibiana, rattled by the false alarm, watches him with big wide eyes. “<Who was that man?>”

Poe takes a deep breath. “<How long have you been living with Tío Arturo?>”

“<Oh, a long time,>” Bibiana says helpfully.

She would have been four when Ben Solo disappeared anyway, he reckons, not old enough to remember a boy who was at college most of the year. “<He… used to live here.>”

“<Why did he leave?>”

How is he supposed to answer that? _He was bent and his family locked him up so he ran away. His father was a smuggler and his grandfather was an arsonist so he decided to become both._ “<I guess he wasn’t very happy.>”

“<So why did he come back?>”

Over Blackbird’s flank, Poe sees Han approaching. “<You should check on Blue Hammer, Bibi.>” Bibiana makes a skeptical clucking noise with her tongue — no way she didn’t learn that from Arturo — and goes.

“I thought the old girl was going to lose her mind if you didn’t come visit her sometime soon,” Han says. “Glad you finally got it together to take her for a ride.”

“Did you miss me, girl?” Poe smiles, and puts his head against Blackbird’s neck. Blackbird snorts, but her ears are pleased, and she leans her neck a little against him. 

“I wanna take you down to Santa Anita for a test lap. Blue Hammer’s been there before, but we can’t have her getting spooked because you’re out of your element. I was going to say we should take Sparrowhawk, but… if you’ve got Blackbird out, I suppose we could load her up.”

“Sure,” Poe says. What a day for old Blackbird — first she races a motorcycle, then she gets to see the track. In a better world, she would have known it like her own corral. He unclips her bridle from the grooming post and pauses. “Can we make a stop on the way down?”

* * *

Rey looks at him. His brown eyes are bloodshot and exhausted. “I know, Rey. You think I haven’t had a thousand fucking delusions myself? I thought I could get out. I thought I’d take the civil service exam and go to the home islands and be the man the Japanese could trust, the one who’d keep an eye on the Americans and watch out for the civilians. I thought I’d prove myself to Oka-san and be his lieutenant. Be a big man on the coast. I thought I’d — thought I’d ask you to be my girl and get a room for you and you’d miss me when I was away.” He looks down. “It helps get you through the night. _I know._ But you have to give it up, Rey. It only makes it worse when it’s over. Just give up.”

“I will _not_ give up. My parents — ” She feels her lip tremble and closes her mouth tightly, until it’s still. “You’re right. There are reasons you’re right. I’ve given their names to the Red Cross and the U.N. and every Jewish aid organization from here to Buenos Aires. But it isn’t the same.” She swallows hard. “I couldn’t help them. But they helped me. They saved me. And I can help you.”

“But you shouldn’t. I’m no good, Rey; I’m worthless. You should leave me alone.”

“You are not worthless, and I will not leave you alone.”

He just looks at her. “You already left me once.”

She stamps her foot. “I won’t go along with you being one of the ones who wreck things and walk away. Your parents, your uncle, that horrible man — they all did you wrong. But that horse-trader killed a woman, Ben; you can’t just take the money and walk away. You have to fix it, Ben.” 

“I thought I was fixing it. Fixing something. Thought I’d take back Donny’s orchard for him, after my grandfather took it. But I just set it on fire. It’s still burning; I can see the smoke. I’m not better than my grandfather. I might be worse.”

His eyes — has she been done for since Mrs. Solo slid that photo of her dark-eyed son across the table? Since he stripped off his mirrored shades in the dive and drank from her glass, like a wild animal drinking from her hand? She lays her hand against his cheek. “There’s an apartment in Warsaw, and I lived there until I was eight. Someone else lives there now. And even.” She swallows hard. “Even if my parents could come back. We couldn’t get it back; they shoot people just for trying. And I know. I know I can’t get my parents back. I can’t get them back, I can’t get my home back. And when I was in Jaffa, it all happened again. People driving other people out. It seems like every horrible thing that happened before has to happen again. But it doesn’t. It _doesn’t._ We can change things.”

He closes his eyes and rubs his rough cheek against her hand. She shivers. “I don’t know how, doll,” he murmurs. “I don’t know how to change it.”

“We’ll think of something,” she whispers. “It’s not delusion, Ben. It’s just hope. It’s not over, and I know we can change this. Just let me help you. Please.”

* * *

D.J. gets up, picking up the portfolio. Finn beats a hurried retreat to the kitchen, trying to keep an eye on the table without turning his face too far. Huxley puts his right hand into his jacket and takes it out empty. So he’ll let D.J. walk, then. Or he wants D.J. to think he will. If he guns him down he’ll take the portfolio and run. Either way, Finn has someone he has to chase. He backs through the swinging kitchen doors, blindly shoving Cuco’s rag back at him. 

He can’t run down the street to his car. The diner is full of cops and there’s no one on this block whose attention he wants. He knows he’s pushing it even walking as fast as he does. Where will D.J. go? If Huxley had any sense, any kind of experience, he’d make D.J. afraid, so he’d go for the plans and make sure they were safe. But Huxley’s a fool, to pull a gun in a public place, and only heaven knows where the horse trader will go now.

Or what Huxley will do.

_I could babysit your housemaid for a few days._

Mrs. Huxley must have told him he’d paid Finn to get her back. He knows Huxley cares about her. But how much does Huxley care — enough to pay Finn, maybe. Enough to give up an arms deal? A deal his father wants? Finn hates the men who beat him when he was young, but he knows the ones who can’t help clinging to the hand that strikes them. He knows it’s only by the grace of God he isn’t one himself.

He gets behind the wheel, pulls his hat down over his face, and tries to think who to follow. He has seconds to decide; one or the other of them is going to go by in a hurry any moment now.

If he follows D.J., he might get the plans. If he sticks with him, he can intervene if Huxley tries to give him Rose.

But what if Huxley decides to stash Rose away somewhere, like money in a safe? He imagines her locked in her little room, banging on the door with her soft hands, and his throat closes.

And of course the question is moot if Huxley’s fool enough to shoot him. Finn remembers, again, the dying woman on the barn floor.

It’s D.J. who drives past him first, and Finn, peering from under his hat, sees the little smirk on his lips. He starts the car and turns out onto the road.

* * *

Han stands awkwardly in the hospital lobby as Poe approaches the desk. “I’d like to visit Captain Aimee Linn, please.”

The nurse frowns down at her paperwork. “Miss Linn is listed as being in serious condition, sir. I’ll have to phone up to the nurses’ station to see if she’s able to receive visitors. May I give a name?”

He clears his throat. “It’s de Marino.” 

She looks up at him, and her frown deepens, a disapproving line appearing between her blond brows. “If you cause any disturbance or bother the patient in anyway, you can be removed. Do you understand?”

He clamps his lips shut and nods. She places the call, and sends him to the second floor with a warning glance.

Capt. Linn looks awful. The skin of her face, neck, and hands is a terrible dark red, and a rubber oxygen mask covers her mouth. One of her legs is elevated in traction, which means it’s worse than Rey said. But her eyes flutter open as he approaches, and she lifts an eyebrow.

“Hello,” he says awkwardly. “Captain.”

She makes a sound behind the mask that’s probably _hello._

“I came to see how you were doing. I’m sorry I left you alone. Last night. I should have stayed and helped you.” She rolls her eyes and waves her hand, and he tries not to resent it. Does she think he wouldn’t have been useful? But she’s not well. “I, uh, I’ve worn a mask like that. Hope you’re not getting claustrophobic.” She shakes her head, but a frown is starting to gather around her eyes. “I just wanted to see how you were. But I can leave, if you’d prefer.”

She rolls her head against the pillow, _no,_ her frown not letting up, and then, to his surprise, she raises her hand a little from the blanket to beckon him closer.

“What is it?” She makes another gesture, like rolling waves. “The river? It’s still flowing. Running high, they say, but the worst flooding is over.” She shakes her head again, harder this time, and says something he can’t understand. When he just frowns at her, she reaches for her mask, and, ignoring his shout of protest, pulls it down.

“Oil line,” she says, in a voice like sand. “Did they check the oil line?”

“I don’t know. Put your mask back on; you need oxygen.”

“Make them check the oil line. Check it yourself if you have to.” She draws a rasping breath. “I know you’re stubborn enough.”

“Put your mask back on; you don’t want them to stick a tube down your throat, do you?”

She reaches for her mask with one hand, but with the other she seizes the sleeve of his coat. “Promise me,” she says, her eyes boring into his. She holds the mask above her mouth.

“Okay,” he says, “I promise,” and she releases his sleeve and lets the mask settle back in place. He takes a step back, and her eyes slip closed.

Mr. Solo’s leg is bouncing rapidly, and his head is turned out towards the parking lot where Blackbird is waiting for them in a trailer. When he hears Poe’s step, he jumps up. “Great. Glad you could see her. Time we were on the road.”

“Do you know if anybody checked on the oil line underneath the Salsipuedes? With that much water, all of a sudden, do you think there might be a pressure problem?”

“You think we might end up like the Cuyahoga out here? I admit it sounds like a nightmare, but Huxley’d never let it happen. He’ll have thirty guys down there by now, getting in the firemen’s hair to make sure he doesn’t lose a drop of his precious crude.”

“I should check in, though, shouldn’t I?”

Han shifts from foot to foot. “We got a time slot at the track, kid.”

“Captain Linn seemed worried.”

“Tell you what,” Han says, after a moment of chewing his lip. “I’ll put a call in to the STVFD, make sure they keep an eye out. Do it right here from the lobby. And then we can get Blackbird down to the track before we hit Sunday traffic.”

Poe hesitates. But the firemen are on the scene; they’ll know better than anybody else what’s up. And they’re more likely to listen to Han than to him. And Han is probably right, about Huxley; Poe has met him, after all. 

He nods, and Han lopes off to the phone booth.

* * *

It’s hard for Ben to get the words out. She’s so good. “You want to help me?”

“Of course,” she says impatiently, as if he’s being ridiculous, as if he doesn’t have every reason to think she’d abandon a criminal like him. Because she did, didn’t she? She left him.

But she was shouting at Uncle Luke. And the marks of her knife in the mural. _I’ll never let anybody hurt you._

And she’s here. And he wants to believe it, so badly. 

He toes the kickstand on the bike and throws his leg over, stepping towards her. “Why? Why me, Rey? What did I ever do to make myself worth it?”

“What do you mean, worth it? I know — I know people who should have helped you and should have cared for you didn’t.”

“Nobody — nobody helped,” he says, unsteadily. “They didn’t know I needed it. They didn’t want to know. And when I told them — they didn’t — ” Her fingers close around his, a crushing grip; she’s so strong.

“Listen to me. You don’t have to be _worthy_ of help, Ben. You just have to need it.” Her hand scrabbles against his, searching for a better hold, and he lets her have it, spreading his fingers to let hers lace between them. “I’ll help you, if you’ll let me. You’d — you’d help me, wouldn’t you?” She squeezes again, even harder, and he squeezes back, and at that moment he recognizes both their grips for what they are: the grip of a drowning woman, a drowning man. She needs help. She doesn’t know how to ask. And he doesn’t know what she needs. But he will not be another person who doesn’t want to know. He looks at her wide desperate eyes, with their gathering tears, as she begs him. “Please let me help.”

He drags her in, his drowning girl, the only one who can help him, the one only he can help. He crushes her to him and she throws her arms around his neck, and she kisses him. She kisses him like she missed him, like he’s been gone for years. Well, he missed her, didn’t he? He presses her against the fence, the morning glories tangling in her windswept hair, and puts his hands around her waist. Her whole body shudders against him.

“I’ll help you, doll. I’ll do anything for you.”

“I like the way you hold me,” she whispers in his ear. “I like how tight you hold me, like you don’t want to let me go.”

“Never,” he says, and her nails scrape the back of his neck and his blood heats. He holds her high against the fence and kisses her neck. No coy bow there today. He puts his lips at the curve of her neck. “Never let you go. Tell me you like it. Tell me again.”

“I love it,” she says, and he bites her. Her head falls back among the flowers and her legs wrap around his waist. “Love the way you hold me.”

He lets his hands slide up her waist to the boning beneath her breasts. They’re so perfectly round, like apples in a stained-glass window Eden. He lays the still-stinging line of his cut against her neck and licks the place he bit her. Her legs pull him closer; through her skirt, her pussy is pressed against his stomach, and the thought makes him breathe harder. Takes some blood from his head. “Want to scratch me, dolly? Make me bleed?”

Her fingers sink into his hair, and he thinks she’ll pull it, make him sting, lean down and bite his mouth. But she draws his head back gently, gently, and puts her mouth against his ear, hot and wet. She sucks his earlobe, and he groans. “No,” she murmurs, and her breath makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. “No, I just want to feel you.”

He presses forward, pinning her against the fence with his weight, and hauls her skirt up. His hands sink into the muscles of her thighs, and they flex against his palms as he runs them roughly up and down. “Yeah? You want to feel me? Want me to make you feel it?” She nods, rubbing herself against him, up and down, her eyes closing, and he breathes hard, kissing her hard, making filthy plans.

His fingers dig, fumbling, into the seam of her underwear and she hisses at him, half pleasure and half warning. “Don’t you dare rip them. You already owe me a pair.” It’s true. He’s sliced up her panties and stolen her stockings and if he had his way he’d tear off every stitch, and give her his jacket to wear when he was done. 

But he settles for just leaning a little out of the grasp of her legs as he yanks this pair down her hips. This time.

She gives a gasp and reaches up to catch herself on the fence as she almost drops. Her fingers dig into the vines over her head, catching at the metal links beneath. He likes that, her reaching arm and the way it lifts her breast; he hikes her naked leg up his waist with one hand, and lays the other over hers on the fence, raising it to a higher link not so clogged with morning glories, where she can get a better grip. “Hold on tight now, doll.”

He’s clumsy, hurried, undoing his belt and unzipping his jeans. She is holding on tight: the muscles stand in her wrists and her legs squeeze at his waist and the fingers of the other hand dig into his shoulder before she reaches up with that one, too, to grip the metal through the leaves. She looks more like a saint than ever, all in white with her hands upraised and a halo of blue flowers with their white star centers. Maybe it makes him blasphemous, to push a Jewish girl into a fence and think of novena candles as he gets his cock out to fuck her, but he’s always been some kind of a sinner, and she likes it, she wants him, and he will not stop.

Can’t stop, maybe. Not when she’s so wet against his searching fingers, and then on the head of his cock. She sinks down on him with a little moan, and he gulps for air. So tight and wet for him. So warm. He’s so deep inside her, and she’s whimpering and squirming on his cock, but her hands are still clenched among the flowers. He gives her a little thrust against the fence, and the fence pushes her back at him, pushes her back onto his cock. She gives a choking little cry. “You feel that?” he asks her, and thrusts again. “You feel me, Rey?” She makes another high, soft sound. “That’s right. That’s right, pretty baby, sing for me.”

She does — sweet sharp gasps and whimpers, and murmured, broken words. Her mouth opens and closes, sweet pink temptation on its own, and he smothers himself in kiss after kiss as he fucks her soft pussy. 

He slows his thrusts and rolls his hips against her, slow and steady, watching her whole body arching, straining after pleasure. “You like that, don’t you? Yeah, yeah, dolly likes that cock. All dripping wet for me.” He’s dirty and bad and he’s the one who makes her pussy clench like that. The spill of her skirt muffles the jingle of his belt buckle. He slips his thumb between her open lips, shaking with pleasure and power as he runs it over her tongue and slides it between their bodies, his hand crushed between their stomachs.

“I’ve got you,” he whispers, coaxing, rubbing, watching her. She feels so good, such a good hot fuck, like she was made to drive him crazy and make him come. But he can take good care of her, too; he can show her that. When she comes — when her back bends like a cracking whip, when her head tosses, bruising flowers and breaking leaves, when she makes sounds that don’t exist — he fastens his hands over hers and fucks her hard. The chain links ring with every shove of his cock.

“Are you my baby?” he gasps against her throat. “Are you my doll? Tell me yes, Rey.”

“Yes. Yes. Don’t leave me alone.”

“No. Never.” His hips start to stutter. “Fuck — Rey — so fucking — gonna — ” But she thrashes and nips him, and he remembers can’t, he can’t come inside her, and it’s like pulling a tooth, pulling out of her, but he does; he presses himself against the soft seam of her thigh and thrusts against her skin, slick and messy with her wetness. He kisses her, once more; he wants his tongue in her mouth when he comes, at least, if he can’t spill all this inside her like he wants to.

It’s a minute, his chest heaving against hers, before he can loosen his grip on the fence and she unlocks her ankles from behind his back. He gets a glimpse of her thigh, dripping white, as she slides down, and then her white skirt falls over her, and she smiles at him, blinding, his girl.

* * *

D.J. doesn’t drive like a maniac. He drives cool and collected and then makes a turn like a maniac. Which means, Finn thinks grimly, that he probably knows he’s being followed. _Probably_ gets real sure when the man’s Buick Super makes two U-turns in a row. Finn shouldn’t be surprised — Mrs. Huxley probably told her lover her husband had a detective working for him; he has to suspect. And it’s possible he caught a glimpse of the Chevy outside the house in the hills.

But if Finn stays on him long enough, maybe he can scare him a little. If he thinks Huxley has a heavy, he might not think Rose is such an easy target.

So he changes tactics. He drives aggressively, like he has other things in mind for the horse dealer besides tailing him. (Maybe he does. But only in the back of his mind, and he pushes them down fast.) He pulls his hat down low, and keeps his hands low on the wheel, and hopes D.J. doesn’t connect the Chevy to the black man in the house. It won’t do to have him jumpy over every dark-complected man he sees.

He thinks maybe it’s working. The Buick starts to drive differently, to take cover between other cars. Finn sees the little swerves it makes as D.J. thinks of pulling over and then reconsiders. It’s not L.A.; there are no heavy crowds for him to lose himself in. Even down at the wharf, where white sunbathers lie on the sand, it’s a hundred yards from the curb to the nearest crowd, and the morning is too far gone for there to be much more than a scattered handful of hopeful men at the day-laborer’s hangout.

But then his speed slows to five miles under the legal limit, and he signals a turn. Which is just suspicious enough to make Finn look up and see where he is.

The sheriff’s office.

He curses as he hits the break and D.J. pulls over. _Damnation._ He was following too closely; he can’t stop now, not without D.J. seeing his face. He has to drive on, and watch as the man climbs out of the car and heads up the steps into the office, his lips pursed in a whistle.

Damnation. Finn’s angry, but he’s not suicidal. He can’t follow D.J. in there. He parks the car on the next block and watches uniformed men go up and down the steps in his rearview mirror as he tries to think what to do.

If he can’t keep after D.J., maybe he should follow his original plan for the day. Having his father in the house is clearly only making Huxley more volatile. Maybe Rose can hide from it in the kitchen, and maybe she can’t. And maybe Huxley will decide she’s acceptable collateral for the return of his plans.

He turns his wheels away from the curb. Sneaking into the house might be risky. But he doesn’t have a choice, does he?

* * *

Blackbird loves the track. Han wants her to walk it, first, so his jockey can get a good look, but they have to walk it twice because Poe is so busy trying to keep his fool horse from breaking away that he finds it hard to observe much else. Then they have mercy and let her run it. Poe can feel her age in her movements only a moment or two after she takes off, but more than that he can feel her happiness and her pride. “Yes,” he murmurs to her, “yes, sweet thing, you’re very fast. The fastest horse at the track today.” And when he gets down she pants and stamps with excitement, and they have to lead her on a cooling circuit before they can load her back up. She goes back into the trailer with her ears and her head down, despite the apple slices Han uses to bribe her.

“Damn horse wants to stay forever,” Mr. Solo grumbles, but Poe can see the wistful look he gives her, imagining how well his prize mare’s filly might have done for herself. If only the track hadn’t closed.

They can hear her stamping around back there all the way back up the coast, the sounds of her iron shoes among the fresh straw Arturo laid down distinct from the rattle of the trailer on the road. He and Han exchange amused looks every time it happens, Blackbird getting sulky that she didn’t get the ribbon she was meant for. 

But then Poe looks down the road, and sees the dirty sky, and the still-dark pillar of smoke rising, and his blood runs cold with guilt.

“What did the firemen say? When you called them?”

“Oh, they’re keeping an eye out. Said they’d send a guy down to look at the river.”

“Huxley didn’t have people out?”

“No,” Han says, frowning. “I guess not.”

The cold feeling in Poe’s veins starts to gather in his gut, starts to weigh him down. Han won’t go near the site of the fire, he knows, not with Blackbird in the back. “Can we turn up into the hills? Once we’re past the Astillero exits. Maybe the south end of Calle Padre Serra?”

“Why?” Han flashes him a look, suddenly concerned. “Your mom’s grave’s up there, isn’t it? You want to pay a visit?”

The pain in his gut gets worse. He should. He’s a bad son. A faithless man. _Promise me._ And he just jaunted off. “I just want — a view of the sea.”

Han doesn’t say anything to that, but he pulls off at the exit Poe asked for. And he doesn’t stop exactly at the gates of the old cemetery, with it’s Chumash-featured Virgen de Guadalupe, but Poe wouldn’t have to walk too far to walk in. He doesn’t, though. _Another time. Soon._ He climbs up through the brush beside the wall, ignoring Han, probably trespassing, until he’s high enough that he can see over the cypress trees that line the road. 

The river just looks dark brown. Muddy water; just what he could expect. It could be half oil; he’d never know. He climbs a little higher and looks further out. The surf looks clean, blue and white, as far as he can see. He starts to breathe a little easier, but then his eyes catch on something else. Far out, not as far as the derricks, but maybe a mile from shore. Maybe a little less. A black spot in the blue Pacific. Too big to be a patch of kelp, or even a dead whale. No ships in attendance, no crews of men suiting up to gauge the damage. Just a stain of dark water, black oil reaching out its poison hand across the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Zoot suit** — A baggy, high-waisted, pleated suit popular in the 1940s, especially with black and Latino men. In 1943, a series of violent attacks in Los Angeles were directed by white men against mostly Latino men in an event called the [Zoot Suit Riots.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoot_Suit_Riots)  
>  **Cuyahoga** — The Cuyahoga River (pronounced KEY-uh-HOAG-uh) in Cleveland was famously polluted with industrial waste and has caught fire at least 13 times since 1850. Although the most famous fire was in 1969, the largest fire was in 1952; after the 1969 fire, TIME ran a photo of the 1952 fire in a best-selling issue (the Kennedys were on the cover), making the Cuyahoga a banner cause for environmentalism. Not unlike the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill. For an interesting perspective on the intersection of racial and environmental justice in Cleveland (and a picture of the ‘52 fire) see [this New York Times article.](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/22/climate/cleveland-fire-river-cuyahoga-1969.html)  
>  **Chumash** — An indigenous people of the southern-central California coast. Prior to the arrival of the Spanish, the population is estimated to have been 22,000; currently enrolled tribal members number in the hundreds. However, many people in the area descend from Chumash ancestors, and some still preserve elements of Chumash religious practice. Place-names of Chumash origin include Malibu, Ojai, Lompoc, Simi Valley, and Port Hueneme. The Chumash language family has been considered extinct since 1965.
> 
> [Huxley’s car](https://rmsothebys-cache.azureedge.net/a/c/0/3/a/b/ac03ab9838a4c56ef41c48691eb7ce1d2ac90fe3.jpg) (Jaguar Mark VII) and [D.J.’s car](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buick_Super#/media/File:Buick_Super_Serie_50_BW_2.JPG) (Buick Super). A Jaguar Mark VII can exceed 100 mph.
> 
> Luis Aguilar was a Mexican actor and ranchero singer with dozens of leading roles, many of them singing parts, to his name. He was called “El Gallo Giro,” after his star-making turn in a 1948 movie of that name. He remained a major cultural figure well into the 1970s.
> 
> In 1954, 75 cents an hour was the minimum wage. (Adjusted for inflation: $7.18.)
> 
> “Don’t make demands on a Friday.” Banks were closed on weekends! If you didn’t get your cash before COB on Friday, you were out of luck until Monday. D.J.’s not interested in checks; checks you can cancel.
> 
> Creature from the Black Lagoon premiered in February of 1954, with its [iconic image](https://cdn2us.denofgeek.com/sites/denofgeekus/files/styles/article_width/public/2016/05/creature_from_the_black_lagoon_girl.jpg?itok=wgluEKQY) of the monster holding the pretty girl in white.
> 
> The famous oil spill in California was the [1969 Santa Barbara spill,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969_Santa_Barbara_oil_spill) which poured between 3 million and 4.2 million gallons of oil into the sea after a blowout at an oil rig, but this one more closely resembles the much smaller but equally destructive [2015 Refugio spill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugio_oil_spill#Environmental_effect), also in Santa Barbara waters, where a pipeline ruptured and spilled 142,800 gallons of oil over a coastline dense with marine life. Hundreds of animals died. Cautions against water slicks and tar balls were still in effect on local beaches when I was there in the summer of 2019.


	16. Favor for Favor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’s your damn oil line, is what it is,” Poe snarls, and Finn, slipping carefully through the fence, hears the metallic bang of his fist hitting the hood. Knowing the way Poe cares for his ride, he must really be committed with his whole heart to making a scene. Or else even angrier than he looked. “We’ve already got pelicans washing up on shore covered in crude. Not a damn man in your offices to answer the phone, and no way to seal the line without your help. Now _call_ who you need to _call_ to close the line so we can burn the spill without blowing your whole refinery sky-high, and maybe you can knock a zero off the damages the county will take you for.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **I have seen the movie now.** Thank you for not telling me anything in advance.
> 
> The content warning for violence stands for the final three chapters, including this one. This chapter also contains a discussion of pregnancy, which in a context is maybe bordering on kink? (I'm not sure.) If you would like to skip this, quit when Rose says "Maybe the French writers are right," and resume after the next section break.
> 
> This chapter was read by [Bombastique](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bombastique/pseuds/Bombastique) ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/Bombastique1)), who I thank from my heart.

“We need to burn it. Now, while the oil is fresh. Before it spreads any further.”

The fireman shakes his head. “Not until they’ve sealed the leak. Otherwise the oil will burn back along the line and blow out the terminal.”

Poe rakes his fingers through his hair. He’s wet to his waist with seawater, his arms ache and hands are raw with rope burn. But the only physical sensation he registers is smell. He can’t smell anything but oil, thick and noxious. The near edge of the spill is still out beyond the surf line, but he can smell it coming closer. He can feel it. “How can we seal the leak?”

The fireman shrugs. “We’ve signaled to the platforms to cut off the supply. But the pipeline workings are proprietary to Huxley. Dropping city workmen down there blind’s a bad plan.”

“Where the hell,” Poe asks, for what feels like the twentieth, thirtieth time today, “are Huxley’s people?”

He gets the same answer he’s gotten every time. “We’ve called. Nobody’s in the office.” A new verse this time, though: “We tried the owner at home, but I guess his wife only speaks French?”

Poe remembers the haughty man in the Resistencia office. “I’ll bet she’s learned a word or two of English over the years.”

“Maybe, but she’s not answering the phone anymore.”

“Then I guess I’m calling in person, aren’t I?”

* * *

Rey walks through the wild garden with wide eyes. It’s so lush. _An oasis._ She dips her fingers into the muddy water between wide lotus leaves. It’s warm.

“It really is a spring,” Ben says. “She shouldn’t have built on it. But I guess they thought a stone foundation would keep the structure safe.” He gestures derisively at the cracked plaster, cracked tile, cracked stone of the house. “Water breaks everything.”

“Maybe she didn’t mean it to last,” Rey says. “Your mother said she was an opera singer.”

“Yeah. Coloratura soprano.”

Rey doesn’t know what that is. Her parents didn’t go to the opera, though once they took her to a crowded theater to see a puppet show. “They didn’t have records back then, did they? You heard music while they sang it and then it was gone. Maybe she liked things like that. That were beautiful and didn’t last.”

“Maybe,” Ben says. He sits down on the wide stone edge of the lotus pool, and she sits beside him.

“We have to think. Can you just go to the sheriff? They’re international criminals, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, and they’ve been in the business for years. They’ll have an easier time finding me than the sheriff will finding them.”

“And you think if they find you — ?” He draws a finger across his throat and she grimaces. “So what can we do?” He doesn’t answer; he leans down and lifts her ankles into his lap. “What about — we could go east. Out past Vegas, even. Chicago. New York.”

He’s still quiet. His fingers stroke her ankles, and she squirms, self-conscious — she hasn’t exactly had a chance to shave her legs recently. But he grips one ankle firmly and runs his whole hand up the back of her calf. It goes against the grain of the short growth of hair there, and the prickling feeling makes her shiver. Then he strokes back down to her ankle, a long smooth caress. “Christ, these legs,” he mutters.

“Ben, I’m trying to — this is serious — ” His hand goes higher this time, thumbing over her thigh to find the stain he left on her. It flakes away from her skin, and he looks at her from a moment from under his brows before he turns his attention back to her legs.

“I know it’s serious, dollface,” he murmurs. “I just don’t know. I thought I could keep them happy. Buy them off.” He follows the curve of her thigh, from soft inner swell to the taut-muscled inside of her knee. 

“Texas, maybe,” Rey says. “If you miss the sea.” His hand is warm and gentle. She leans back along the edge of the pool, back on her elbows, watching him trace her with his hand and eyes.

“I just — I want to — ” He raises her ankle higher, using both hands now, and ducks his head to meet it, and she sinks down, back flat against the stone, eyes closing as his lips meet her skin, and all of him is so warm, hands mouth breath. He jerks her a little closer, and she inhales the lush smell of flowers as he nips and licks.

A motorcycle engine throbs somewhere nearby. Not as soft a purr as Ben’s Vincent, but still a low, expensive sound. Ben raises his head, his expression hazy and dislocated. “Donny,” he says, and shuts his eyes. He leans his forehead against her leg, not desire now so much as exhaustion. “I can’t go. I burned the orchard. I gotta make it up to him. Get it back for him. I can’t leave until I’ve done that.”

Part of her wants to kick him in the teeth and drag him to Chicago by force. But she can’t help it; she loves his rage for honor. When he’d saved her in Beckett’s office, she’d taken it for plain American chivalry, but now she knows its roots — his determination not to do what has been done, to be something different from the men who came before him, who raised him and betrayed him. The backs of his fingers ghost down her leg once more, and then, tight-lipped, he puts her leg down and gets up to meet Mitaka.

* * *

Finn, lurking in the shadow of the hibiscus bush and trying to settle himself with a cigarette, jumps when he sees Poe’s car come around the block toward Huxley’s place. He drops his smoke and steps out, gesturing him over to the curb.

“What’re you doing here?”

“Huxley’s oil line failed under pressure from the flood. It ruptured offshore. He needs to get his people out there to seal it off so we can burn back what we can.”

There’s a rage in Poe’s voice, and a desperation in his white-knuckle grip on the wheel, that makes Finn halfway want to nod and let him go. But he’s been pacing here, grinding his teeth, for hours, and not getting anywhere. He leans in. “Can you — will you do me a favor?”

“What’d you have in mind?”

“Can you… make a bit of a fuss? Distract them a little bit? I know a way in but I’m afraid they’ll spot me if I try it in daylight.”

“Yeah,” Poe says, grim. “Yeah, I can make a fuss, all right.”

He kicks the car down the block to Huxley’s gate as Finn watches. His horn blares out.

 _“Huxley! Come out, Huxley! It’s a goddamn emergency!”_ Finn can see him through the back window; he’s throwing his whole body against the horn. He’s getting results, too, in terms of the volume. And it’s not long until Finn, slipping under the boughs of the pepper tree, hears the crunch of shoes on gravel. Maybe it’s Rose. If Rose comes to the gate he’ll be able to see if she’s all right — 

It’s Mrs. Huxley. “<My husband is not available,>” she begins, haughtily, but Poe cuts her off, climbing out of the car and slamming the door.

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s real nice, but send out your husband or tell me where he is.”

“<My husband — >”

“Yeah, yeah, your marie. Huxley. Send him out.”

“<Listen here — <”

“You want to keep pretending you don’t speak English? Fine. I’m going to keep speaking it to you anyway. Bet you know the word _money_ don’t you? _Dollars?_ You’re losing them. Got it? You’re losing money. And you’ll lose a lot more if the county sues your husband’s company for negligence. So if you like being rich, which I bet you do, you’d better do — something — quick.”

There’s a silence, and then Mrs. Huxley takes a few steps back towards the house, calling out. “Mr. Huxley!”

Finn, listening to the footsteps coming down the drive, hears the one-two-three step of a cane, and his heart sinks. _No Rose to come to the gate. No Huxley to talk to Poe. He’s taken her to that snake._ His fists clench at his sides, and he makes himself breathe steadily. _I don’t know that. Maybe Mrs. Huxley just didn’t want Rose talking to strangers. She might say things the Huxleys don’t want said. She could be in the kitchen. In the garden. Sweeping the floors._

 _Or locked in her room, if they caught her snooping after the missile plans._ He slides the loose board aside.

“What’s all this?” says Huxley senior’s crusty voice.

“It’s your damn oil line, is what it is,” Poe snarls, and Finn, slipping carefully through the fence, hears the metallic bang of his fist hitting the hood. Knowing the way Poe cares for his ride, he must really be committed with his whole heart to making a scene. Or else even angrier than he looked. “We’ve already got pelicans washing up on shore covered in crude. Not a damn man in your offices to answer the phone, and no way to seal the line without your help. Now _call_ who you need to _call_ to close the line so we can burn the spill without blowing your whole refinery sky-high, and maybe you can knock a zero off the damages the county will take you for.”

A pause and a faint grinding sound; Huxley’s cane sinking in the gravel as he leans more weight on it. “Very well,” he says at last. “You may go.”

“Oh, may I? Well, I’m not. Not until I know you’ve done something.”

“I assure you something will be done.”

Finn puts his back to the fence and edges away from the driveway. If Poe can keep them distracted, maybe he can get around and into the garden.

“That’s swell. I need it done now, so I can go back down and do what needs doing.”

“I’m sure a technician will notify the firemen or whoever is responsible for taking care of these things.”

“Me. I’m responsible.”

“I very much doubt that, but the matter will be addressed, regardless. Now, we are in the midst of a difficult personal time, so I require you to leave us in peace.”

Finn’s ears prick up. _A difficult personal time?_ It’s three yards of open ground to a hedge he could get behind.

“I’m sorry for your troubles but they don’t outweigh the fate of the whole coast.”

“Remove yourself, or I’ll summon the police to remove you.”

Poe takes a step forward, and Finn takes his chance, running fast and close to the ground and as quiet as he can. Praying Poe doesn’t do anything stupid, but also thanking him for being just stupid enough to be a distraction. He puts his feet as close to the roots of the hedges as he can, staying on the soft earth. 

“Turn — off — that — oil. Or you’ll pay for it.” Then Poe’s car door slams and his engine turns over. Finn takes advantage of the roar of the motor and the wheels to move fast towards the house, but he stops when he hears Mrs. Huxley’s voice. “<I don’t suppose Armitage will actually do anything.>”

“<If he’s too busy weeping over his thieving little housemaid to act in a crisis, I’ll do it,>” old Mr. Huxley says contemptuously. “<One more thing I have to do for him.>”

 _Weeping over his housemaid?_ He pictures Huxley holding Rose the way he had when Finn brought her back, like a ragdoll. _Because he doesn’t want to let her go?_ He tries to walk faster. _Or because something’s already happened to her?_

“<He should’ve learned his lesson the first time she ran away,>” Mrs. Huxley snaps, and Finn freezes, blinking. _The first time?_ “<Is he truly weeping now?>”

“<No, no. Only metaphorically. I _hope._ When I left him he was pacing the study.> I had better handle it myself, regardless,” he adds in English, in a low growl Finn has to strain to hear. “He’s made a hash of everything, and losing that girl again seems to have given him a proper nervous breakdown.”

Finn stays frozen until he hears the faint sound of the house door close. Then he turns and runs, back along the hedge and the fence and out; he doesn’t stop until he’s behind the wheel of the car again. Rose has left the Huxleys again. Even though he hasn’t brought her the plans yet. Did Huxley do something? Did she overhear a plan to use her as collateral?

And where is she now?

He pulls his hat down over his face, starts the car, and tries to think.

* * *

Mitaka wrings his hands, and Ben fights down the urge to scream at him to quit it, even though it makes the panic in his chest squeeze harder. “Kanda and Hanataka are trying to get in touch with Fasuto Oda men in San Fran. I shouldn’t be here, Ren; I really shouldn’t. They’re going to murder me if they find out.”

“They won’t find out,” Rey says sternly. Donny gives her a cold look. “Ben, I don’t think you can scare your uncle off his land. Your land, I mean,” she adds, with a small apologetic nod. “But I think we could talk him into it. Especially with your mother’s help.”

Ben shakes his head. He’s shaking it too hard; he makes himself stop. “They don’t have the conscience.”

“They do,” she insists. “They — ”

“And what about the trees?” he interrupts. He doesn’t want to hear her defend them. He wants her to defend him.

“If they’re burned, plant more,” she says. “Ash can make good fertilizer, can’t it?”

“It’ll take years before they’ll produce a crop,” Donny says. “And there were 1200 trees in that orchard.”

Ben looks down. His head hurts. He wants to throw them out, lock himself in here alone before he does any more damage to what he meant to protect.

The sound of footsteps among the taro plants makes him jump up, reaching for the gun, ready to push Rey behind him, give her cover to run. _She wouldn’t run._

 _“Rose?”_ Rey cries, incredulous. It’s not Kanda or Hanataka come to kill him; it’s the little girl with the bad Japanese, the jockey’s sister. The one he promised to get to Hanoi, or at least Tokyo. Another stupid daydream plan, another debt he can’t pay. Another person he’s screwed over. She’s carrying a ragged-edged bindle, and she marches through the plants straight towards them, her chin raised, and drops it at his feet, swallowing hard.

“Listen,” she says. “I know I said I’d get you clean money. And this is the marked stuff. But I have a plan. I can get you clean cash, and more of it. I just need a ride south.”

Rey and Mitaka are both staring back and forth between the two of them, and Ben flushes hot with shame. “I thought,” he mumbles hurriedly. “I thought we could get her to the Zainichi smugglers. Pay them to take her with them. Get her on the road to Hanoi.” Rey is beaming at him. It makes it worse.

“I have a plan,” Rose says again, hurriedly. “Listen. The horse my sister was going to ride, Blue Hammer? She’s a good bet, but the new jockey is a first-timer, and that’ll make the bookies lengthen the odds. I’ll put the marked money on her, with a little bit for a hedge. We’ll get clean cash back.”

“Poe’s riding her!” Rey says. “There’s no way he’ll lose.”

“It’s too much money,” Donny says. “Bookies won’t take it.”

“Suppose we split it four ways,” Rey says. “Unevenly. Ben takes the largest share, so it’s least suspicious.”

“Ren.” Mitaka’s tone is uneasy, and he plucks at the sleeve of Ben’s coat, twitching his head away from the women. When Ben steps away with him, he murmurs, “Ren, the Zainichi network will stop in San Fran before they stop here. They’ll knife you if they see you, and if they don’t get a wakagashira’s word to take her, they’ll take the cash and throw her overboard.”

A car is coming up the road in front of the house. Slowly. His nerves stretch tight, and snap when the engine stops by the front gate. “You told them where I was,” he hisses, grabbing Mitaka. 

“Did not!” Mitaka cries like an insulted child. “They must have followed me — ”

“Be quiet!” The gate is locked — only the far edge of the pond is visible from the street — the way in isn’t obvious — except he’s parked his damn bike by it — but still — but still there’s a chance, he thinks, as he listens for footsteps — 

“Mr. Solo?” calls an American accent, cautiously. “I saw your motorbike — is Rose there?”

 _“Finn!”_ Rose and Rey call together, astonished, and Rose runs to the gate. “What are you doing here?”

“I heard you’d run away,” the newcomer says. “I thought maybe you’d gone to the Solos’, but you weren’t there, and then I remembered that you’d sounded a little funny when Mrs. Solo told us about her mother’s place. I asked for directions, and then I saw a bike I’d seen before.”

Rose leads him along the fence to the way in, smiling and talking all the while, and Ben shuts his eyes. He’d imagined having a bike people would recognize. He’d imagined people telling stories about it, the lightning-fast motorcycle and the ruthless man who rode it. Instead it’s a clear track for anyone who cares to hunt him. Are all his daydreams going to come back to mock him like this?

The light weight of Rey’d hand settles on his arm, and the bitter ache in his heart eases. “We’ll find a way,” she tells him.

* * *

Blackbird canters down the beach. Han’s let Poe borrow her; she lets him see the whole coast without the tedious alternation of driving, getting out, walking the beach, climbing back in, and repeating the process. They finally got one of Huxley’s techs, but it’s too late to burn now; there’s too much oil, spread too far. “The pipe was too big,” one of the firemen told him, grimly. “That’s the whole problem. A smaller line wouldn’t have crumpled and blown out down the line like that.”

Personally, Poe thinks there are more problems than that. But that’s for the county’s lawyers to figure out when they take this to court. What matters now is clean up and containment. Volunteers cluster on the beaches; fishermen’s wives sewing burlap skirts onto old nets as their husbands hurry to drag in as much fish as they can from the water that’s still clean, and off-duty lifeguards and boy scout troupes swim the booms out to the recreation boats the firemen and rangers have commandeered. And Poe and Blackbird go up and down, directing and carrying messages to the groups without radios and once, dragging a diminutive scout who waded out too far back to shore.

A woman struggles with an oil-soaked gull, trying helplessly to scrub it clean as it screams and fights. Her wet dress is a mess of seawater and crude, and her cheeks are soaked with tears, and Poe knows she knows the gull will die. But still she pins its wings and wipes oil from its eyes.

He turns his head away and keeps riding.

Han flags him down at Los Baños Beach, not far from the pier where he’d smoked with the rent boys. It feels like months ago; he wonders how they are. If they’re all right.

Han is frowning. “It’s getting late. Are you ready to come home?” Poe looks at the sky; the sun is getting low. But the oil — “You have to rest. The race is tomorrow, kid.”

Blackbird shifts her weight and shakes her head higher; Poe wouldn’t be surprised if she knew the word _race._ He leans forward and pets her neck. “I know. I’ll — soon. Just let me finish this route; there’s a group at the Canalito inlet with a radio. They can let the others know I’m going off-duty.”

It’s nine miles to Canalito. Han’s frown darkens, but all he says is, “I’d have given you a different horse if I’d known you were going for distance.”

“I’ll be back before sunset, I promise.”

“You’d better.” Mr. Solo reaches his hand out to Blackbird, who sniffs it over. “Aren’t _you_ having a day.”

* * *

In the ruddy sunset light, Rose opens a drawer and pulls out two big sheets. As Finn watches, she folds them together with a practiced hand, and lays them down on the moth-eaten carpet in a little mat. “You know,” he says, frowning, “I’m sure there are other beds in a place this big.” She and Rey have gone through the place, turning and beating and fluffing old feather beds. “And — you know Rey’s like a sister to me, but I got to say, I’m pretty sure she’s not actually going to sleep in the one we made up for her.”

Rose looks up at him from where she’s kneeling on the sheets. “We — you can take one if you’d like,” she says, stammering a little, and lowering her head. “I just — this is just — what I’m used to.”

He sits down beside her and puts his hand gently on her shoulder. He didn’t miss that stifled invitation to stay with her. “It’s a bit earlier than I usually go to bed, but if you are...” 

“It’s just — there aren’t any electric lights here, you know,” she says. “And candles won’t last very long.”

“So there won’t be anything to do but go to bed soon,” Finn agrees. “So we might as well.” She’d cut them fresh lotus rootstalks to eat, leaning into the water past her elbows with her crude little knife; it was new to Rey and him, but both of them have fed themselves on stranger and worse, and the plants were pleasant, wet and sweet.

She seems hesitant, but she doesn’t flinch away from his hand. He lies down on mat, holding out an arm, and she goes right away, resting her head against his shoulder with a sigh. They’re quiet for a long time, while he stares at the plaster ceiling and feels her warm through his shirt, and then he can’t be quiet anymore. “You thought I wouldn’t find you the missile plans, so you decided to just go back?” _Without telling me. Without saying goodbye._ He can’t blame her if she wants to put an ocean between herself and Huxley, so he shouldn’t be hurt, but he is. He can’t seem to help it.

“No,” she says, sounding surprised. She props her little chin on his chest and looks up at him. “I knew you’d get them; I just wanted to be prepared for when you did.”

Finn swallows hard. She’d had faith in him, real faith; the kind you can make plans on. “I will. Soon. I promise.”

“I know,” she says, and smiles at him in what remains of the light. She lays her cheek back down against him.

“But… are you really sure you want to do this? Ship out with this… gang?”

“I have to,” she says, evenly. The same way she’d told him to take her back to the Huxleys.

“You think you can trust them? And a boat will take weeks — won’t you get there too late?”

He feels her swallow hard. “I have to try. I have to risk it.”

“And if you can get $4,000 — why not just fly to Manila?”

“I don’t have the right papers. Armand is my sponsor in the U.S.; I only have a worker’s visa. I can’t travel.”

“I don’t like it,” he says. “It’s not safe.”

She kisses him. Part of him doesn’t want to be distracted — he wants to find a way to keep her safe. Part of him desperately wants to be distracted — to forget she’s leaving, going with dangerous men to be a soldier in a dangerous place, and only think of her soft little mouth on his, of how good it feels to pull her all the way on top of him, feel her settle against his body, warm and soft.

He lets himself think about how good it feels a little too much; under the gentle pressure of her body, his cock stirs, and she makes a small, startled noise against his lips. “Sorry,” he says, hoping she won’t stop. It’s her body; it’s her taste; it’s the memory of her bare breasts in another dark room. She licks her lips, and he cranes his neck to catch another kiss, persuade her to keep going. Maybe she’ll touch him again. He remembers the way she stroked him. The light brush of her kiss on his cock.

“Bác Hồ is celibate,” she says, and he blinks at her. “He’s married to the revolution. To the people.”

“I thought communists believed in free love?” He’d thought maybe that was what she meant, about kissing comrades.

She rolls a little off him, and he’s worried he’s offended her. There are good odds she’s a Catholic; maybe she thinks he thinks she’s a whore. “Rose — ”

“Some of them,” she says. “I read that in some books. The ones the French sympathizers send, mainly. The ones in Việt talk more about maintaining a clean Party to fight the colonizers. And that makes sense; when people — they fight, don’t they? If two men want the same woman, even if she — goes with both of them, they still fight. Or two women with one man; it’s the same thing.” He nods. He can certainly see that. “But then I thought, don’t they fight even if she never touches either one? So maybe the French writers are right, and the best principle for liberation is sharing desire like anything else? Only — it’s easier to share like that if you can’t get pregnant, isn’t it? So then the men will be more liberated than the women and — I don’t know.”

“Rose,” he says softly, “I would never want to get you in trouble.”

“That’s how Americans say _pregnant,_ isn’t it?”

“Pregnant when you’re not married, yeah.”

“Marriage is bourgeois,” she says sternly, and he tries not to smile at this one bit of iron certainty in the middle of her nervous confusion. She looks down, then, and her fingers toy with the buttons on his shirt. “I… would like to have a baby, though.”

“You would?” Warmth spreads through him. She would make a good mother, wouldn’t she? Loving and caring and strong-willed. He can see her with a baby in her arms, with — 

“Yes,” she says, and now she’s undoing his buttons, her little lips pursed, and his breath comes faster. “A baby. To live in the future. To love the better world we’ll build. And make it even better than we could.” She presses down on his bare chest, hands underneath his shirt, and she straddles him, shimmying her hips a little backwards. He’s so hard for her, for the way her dress slides up her thighs and tickles the skin of his stomach.

“Rose,” he says, panting. “Rose, I — ”

“Maybe not free love,” she says, and her eyes are shining in the dark, bright and imploring. “But maybe — maybe just love? Wouldn’t that be a good principle?”

He runs his hands up her sides, lifting her dress, and pulls her down to him. “Yes. Rose. You’re — Rose — you’re so beautiful — ” _A full-blown rose. Pearl-eyed and righteous._ He sees the same shabby underthings as before, and he has a wild thought that it would be better to have her naked all the time, that he wants her naked lying in his bed for him. He fumbles them off her and flips her over, so she’s lying underneath him, the black wings of her hair against the white sheet. She puts her arms around his neck and her face is hungry and worried.

He kisses the corner of her lips, and puts his mouth next to her ear. She shivers with his breath. “Squeeze your legs together,” he whispers, pushing her knees gently up and together. It’s not like being inside her would be, for either of them, but it still feels good, the warmth and the softness and the sight of the shadowy dimples in her knees flexing as she squeezes him. Her breasts move with his thrusts and her eyes hold his as his hips speed up.

“Rose — ” he says again, and she interrupts him.

“Hoa; my name is Hoa.”

“Hoa,” he says, clumsily, and he jerks clumsily between her thighs, and her smile glows in the dark.

He can’t just let himself fall forward or he’ll fall asleep; he kneels and reaches for his handkerchief to wipe her clean. He feels raw and tender and so good. “Do you have another name? Besides Finn?”

Usually he wouldn’t say anything. It’s just that she’s so warm in his hands, under the tips of his fingers. He’s told her things before, other things he doesn’t say, and her face is open and lovely like the moon. He could set his days to her. “Faiz,” he says. “My father named me Faiz.” She opens her mouth, and then pauses, tilting her head as he chews his lip. “You can call me that here. But — but not out there. Okay?”

He knows that he doesn’t have to tell her what he means by _out there._ Out there is the world, and the world has to change.

“Faiz,” she whispers, and he ducks down between her legs. It doesn’t feel like his name; it doesn’t feel like him. But it feels like something precious of his that she can hold in her hands, and keep safe for him.

She tastes watery and sweet, like the lotus rootstalk. He doesn’t know if he’s any good; he’s never done this before, though Rey, drunk and businesslike, had drawn him a diagram once while Poe laughed and poured himself more whiskey. But her legs tremble, and she smothers her mouth with both hands, and Finn thinks, _if she wanted me to give her a baby, I would. But she’s six kinds of wrong if she thinks I’ll just leave her with those gangsters._

* * *

Ben’s staring at the densely cobwebbed corners of the ceiling, slowly realizing how strange it is that he’s never been afraid of this place, when Rey comes in, walking slowly in the dark. “Doll,” he says, and strikes a match to show her where he is. She runs to blow it out before it can burn his fingers, and he gathers her to him. 

“Where were we, baby?” he asks, feeling in the dark for her ankles, his eyes readjusting after the flare of the match. She laughs a little, but when he takes one ankle in each hand and draws them up and apart, she falls back against the bed with a thump, arms stretched over her head. He undoes two buttons and the shirt slips right off her; her flesh is a tawny shadow against the cream of the old sheets, and she arches her back, looking for comfort in the feathers as he returns to the important business of running his lips over every curve her legs have to offer, humming tunelessly as she starts to wriggle and swallow hard.

“Are you sore, Rey?” he whispers, slipping a finger under her panties. She doesn’t answer, and he strokes her little bush of curls back. “I really gave it to you, didn’t I? Against that fence? We don’t have to fuck, doll. Not if you’re sore.” He feels wetness on his fingers, and he’s hard for sure, but he keeps his touch as gentle as he can. “Does it hurt, petting like this?”

“No,” she whispers, and her foot slides up his leg. He inhales as it moves up from his knee, her elegant little toes pointed and her small callouses scratching tenderly through his jeans. She bends her knee open to get her foot as high up his leg as she wants, and the way it spreads her at the same time that she traces the line of his cock makes him twitch. She does it again and he catches her foot with both hands.

“Dolly,” he says mock-sternly, rubbing the tender inside of her arch. “I told you about teasing, didn’t I?”

“Who’s teasing?” she challenges. “I _am_ sore. But maybe I’m not _that_ sore.”

“Oh?” he says, leaning down. “Is my baby a little nymphomaniac? It’s okay, baby; I’m a bit of a deviant myself.” He says it lightly, and presses his mouth to her hip so he doesn’t have to see her face. She knows. He knows she knows, and she still says she wants him, but. But what if.

“I love what you do to me,” she whispers, and his cheeks flood with warmth. “You make me feel so good. Lick me and finger me and fuck me so well.” He’s grateful for the dark, for the screen of her leg, to hide his blush, the tremble in his lips as she feeds him just what he’s hungry for.

“Anything,” he says against her thigh, moving her panties aside with his fingers. “Anything for my baby.” He brushes his lips over her where she’s wet and her thighs spasm. “Anything from my pretty little nympho doll.”

“All of it,” she says, rolling her hips. “Any of it. Ben. Please.”

He spreads her with his fingers and runs his nose and tongue up the center of her. She hisses and grabs at his hair. Just like the first time he tasted her. Only now she tastes different. Rawer. She tastes like she’s been fucked, and he did that. He’ll do it again. His blood fizzes like soda pop; his head feels like it’s full of stars; his cock is so hard it almost hurts.

He licks her, flat-tongued and desperate, and her fingers scrape through his hair and she murmurs his name. “Ben. Ben.” Another word, too, as her legs clench in close around his head and he has to fight to keep with her. _Dobje,_ is sounds like. He doesn’t know it, but he likes it. _Ben,_ she says again. He wants to fuck the English out of her, fuck her until she doesn’t remember any word besides his name.

She’s so wet now, so wet and open, and he gets up on his knees and unbuckles his belt, hissing when he pushes down his jeans and his cock comes free. He takes her by the hips and halfways turns her over. She rolls with his hands, turning onto her knees, and he runs his hands up the backs of her legs and over her ass before he presses himself inside her. The sound she makes goes straight to his head; his fingers sink into the soft skin of her waist and he pulls her back towards him. “Fuck. Rey. Fuck.”

She claws at the bed, and groans his name deep in her throat. He looks down and sees his cock shine slick in the darkness as it opens her up, and he yanks her backwards, makes her moan, fucks her likes he needs to, like he has to, hard and deep and rough, and the curve of her back is the loveliest thing he’s ever seen. He pounds himself into her like he wants to break his hot little dolly, but he’s the one who’s going to break; she’s thrashing in his hands and she’s so tight and beautiful; the line down his face aches as she smothers her cry in the mattress, and he pulls out at the last moment he can bear to, and marks a dirty line down her back and her ass.

He doesn’t mean to fall on top of her, but he does, just for a moment, and it feels so good, to feel her there under him, breathing hard, smelling like sweat and motorcycle grease and the faint traces of her perfume. But he knows he’s too heavy; he rolls off.

She rolls after him. She pushes her skirt down, and reaches her arms back into her shirt, but she takes a fistfull of his shirt in her hand and pulls him close, her head on his chest. He dozes, but even in his sleep he can feel her moving. He opens his eyes and watches her head rise and fall with his breathing. She’s not sleeping. “What’re you thinking of, baby?” he murmurs.

She’s quiet. He waits. Her brown hair is messy, and he makes it messier, twirling it in his fingers.

When she finally speaks, her voice wavers. “How did you know my parents were dead?”

He swallows and takes a deep breath, smoothing her hair back behind her ear. “I knew you knew.” Her body jerks closer to his. “Your voice. When you talked about them.” He struggles uselessly for the words, to describe that desperate fairytale tone. “And I thought — if you really believed they were alive. You wouldn’t be in California, would you?”

She buries her face against him, and he strips off his shirt to hold her closer to his skin.

“I missed them,” she says into his chest, and he doesn’t say anything because he knows that’s not all she has to say. “I waited on the docks for them. I stole money to send them letters. I wasn’t the only one. Asking at the post office every day if there were letters — there was a line. All of us asking, none of us getting anything. So I wasn’t the only one. But I — I was the only who — ” Her voice is a whisper. “I thought they’d done it all on purpose. Given me to Shmuel knowing he’d be killed and I’d be all alone. I thought they were getting rid of me. So they could go and fight, and. They’d dumped me because I wasn’t good for anything. Everybody said that. The strong ones fought. And. So they must have hated me for being weak. And I wrote them, I said, _I can fight. Take me back; I’ll fight._ But they never answered. I was never good enough. And I tried — so hard — ”

He cups her head in his hands, and she throws her arms around his neck, pulling herself up his body until her mouth is beside his ear and he can hear her desperate, soft whimper: “And. When it had been years. I started. I hated them. For not thinking I was good enough. Or for not coming with me. And. If they were dead. And I hated them. I would be worse than anything. The worst person in the world. But if they were alive. They could explain. And I thought, if they could just explain. I would forgive them. But they’re dead, and I’m the worst, the very worst thing — ”

Her tears have been running down his neck, but now she breaks into sobs, gasping and hiccuping and trying to smother it. He turns his head to the side, kissing her hair. “They loved you,” he says. “That’s the explanation. They loved you. They were trying to protect you.”

“I know. I know. And they died. And I hated them. And — ”

He kisses her quiet. An awkward kiss, just his mouth pressed hard against hers. “It was just a feeling,” he says, when he lets her go. “You did what they wanted you to. You stayed alive.”

“I don’t deserve it,” she sobs. “I don’t deserve to be saved.”

He opens his mouth to argue with her, to tell her all the wonderful things she is, and how much she deserves anything anybody’d care to give her. But then he remembers what she said to him, this morning. How it cut into the smothering fog of his pain like a sodium flare.

“You don’t have to deserve to be saved. You don’t have to be worthy. You just have to need it.”

Her head jerks up and she stares at him. She doesn’t seem to be breathing. He runs his thumbs over her lashes as delicately as he can, letting the tears slide down his fingers. “And… there’s still time to forgive them, Rey.” He swallows hard, listening to himself. “There’s no... deadline. No rush. But there will always be time.”

They sit for a long time, his fingers smoothing through the silver lines on her face. Then, silently, she kisses him, and settles her head against his chest. He stays awake for a long time, staring out over her head into the dark, and thinking about forgiveness, until all her tears are dry and her breath is slow and steady.

He’s almost about to close his eyes when he sees a light coming down the hall, and he half-sits up, frowning. Rey makes a sleepy noise and slides down to his lap, and Finn is standing in the doorway, a broken candle in his hand. “Solo,” he whispers. “Can we talk?”

“Shhh,” Ben says, as low as he can. But Rey still stirs, and he crushes the urge to snap at Finn as she raises her sleep-soft head.

“Finn? What is it?”

“It’s about Rose.”

* * *

Dishtowel in hand, Poe hears the motor in the driveway and reckons it’s probably Finn. Leila’d sat like a stone through dinner, and pulled Han off for a “private talk” afterwards, so the dishes are up to him. He’s a bit worried not to have had a call from Rey, either to the ranch or the answering service, but that tomfool leap isn’t the first reckless thing she’s been known to do for a case, and she always comes back safe and sound. Finn he’s more worried about — of the three of them, Finn’s the sensible one, the one who drops back and surveils, not the one who sneaks into white men’s houses. So when he hears the car, he throws the towel over his shoulder and runs for the door.

It’s quiet upstairs. No shouting. No slaps. He can’t hear anything at all. He’s exhausted, but he hurries a little faster, whipping himself around the stairs on the wrought-iron bannister, and reaches for the door.

The man in the doorway is an Anglo. White hair prickles on his leathery cheeks and he gives Poe a smile that’s more of a sneer. “Tell Señor Solo that Señor Beckett is her to see him, eh hombre?” He pronounces the _h_ in _hombre; Señor_ sounds like _seen-yore._

So this is Beckett. Han’s old contraband fence, and the man who wants to buy Skywalker’s land. All things considered, Poe thinks, a fellow he’d like to keep an eye on.

He bows. “Bienveniedo, señor.” He ushers Beckett into the front parlor, where the old man seats himself beside the empty fireplace and puts his feet up.

Upstairs, outside the master bedroom, he hesitates. It’s dead silent. _What’s going on?_ But his shoes must have been audible on tile. “Poe?” Mrs. Solo calls.

“Sí, señora,” he says, in case Beckett can hear him. “Sr. Beckett está aquí. Para ablar al señor.”

There’s a very long pause, and then Han opens the door. Poe steps backwards in shock; the man looks ruined. His eyes are red and watery and his cheeks look sunken, as if he’s aged ten years in twenty minutes. “Beckett?” he says. His voice is a hoarse whisper.

Poe nods. Han runs a hand over the wild wisps of his hair and swallows hard. “Fine,” he says, still hoarse. “Fine. Why not.”

Poe follows him down the stairs and lets Beckett see him head back to the kitchen. He makes some small noises. Nothing noisy or ostentatious. Just the little background hum of an efficient servant. The sort of thing that fades into the background; the sort of thing that can fade away without anybody noticing.

He takes off his shoes and goes back into the hall. With his back to the wall, he creeps to the edge of the shadow the parlor lamp throws.

“What are you talking about, Beckett?” Han sounds tired and tense.

“Just… a little favor for favor. I know you’re a family man, at the end of the day. And I can do your family a favor.”

“What kind of favor?”

“I was at the Krennick place the other day, Solo. An awful lot of Japanese on the spot. More than Krennick would have wanted, I’m sure. It would be a shame if the sheriff had to make an arrest over what happened. And I mean, for murder — that would be awfully hard on Leila wouldn’t it?”

Krennick. The back of Poe’s neck prickles, and Han makes a choked sort of sound. “Now, listen, Beckett — ”

“I’m only saying, if you can help me a little, the sheriff doesn’t have to know what I saw.”

“Whatever you saw, Beckett. Whatever you think you saw. You don’t know what I know.”

“Oh?” Beckett’s trying to sound amused, but there’s a coarse scrape of fear in his voice, too. “What do you know?”

“Krennick was — he was a no-good son of a bitch, Beckett; I know we did business with him, but he was the lowest of the low and maybe you want to call it murder, maybe you don’t, but I say he got what was coming to him! And if the sheriff thinks he fell down the stairs — I don’t see why we can’t leave it at that.”

There’s a clatter, and Beckett’s shadow on the floor lengthens as he stands up. Han Solo isn’t used to pleading. Not really. Poe’s seen him ask favors from his friends, but always lightly, always like it’s nothing, and with a pay-you-back-on-Sunday clap on the shoulder. But now, clumsily, he’s trying to beg. He doesn’t know how, and his voice is halfway to a snarl as he says, “Whatever went on — no one has to say anything. Krennick deserved what he got.”

“Do you think you can threaten me?” Beckett says, quiet and dangerous. “I’ve got a witness. Between the two of us we could put your son on murderers’ row. You don’t have shit on me.” 

His voice rises, and Han breaks in, baffled. _“Ben?_ Ben busted up his mug, sure, but he didn’t — are you saying — ”

“Don’t fuck with me, Solo.”

There’s a click that snaps all Poe’s nerves taut as piano wire. _A gun. He has a gun._ And then, like an echo, the click of heels on tile, and Leila’s voice comes from the stairs. “Han, what’s going on?”

“Nothing. Go back upstairs, Leila.”

Leila ignores him; her shoes tap slowly down the stairs. The two men’s shadows flicker and shift as Han moves towards her and Beckett follows him. Poe sees a brief flicker of Mrs. Solo as she rounds the bannister, a flash of swirling black skirt and a stony face. Does she see him before she crosses out of his line of sight and becomes a third shadow, conjoined to Han’s, between the two men?

“Are you threatening my husband, Mr. Beckett?”

“Get out of the way, Mrs. Solo; I’d hate to hurt a lady.”

“Oh?” she says mildly. Poe shifts his feet, as quietly has he can, thinking despairingly of his pistol, 100 miles away in his nightstand in Los Angeles. But if there’s three of them, maybe Beckett won’t know where to aim — but he has to be fast — 

“Don’t you even think of saying a word about Orson Krennick to the sheriff, either of you.”

“Wait,” Han says slowly. “How did Krennick die?”

“He _fell down the stairs._ You understand me?”

“And you pushed him, did you, Mr. Beckett?” Leila’s voice is cool, but Han splutters — it would be funny, the sounds he’s making, if Beckett didn’t have a cocked gun in his hand.

“Listen here. Both of you. You’re not going to say a damn thing about Krennick, and you’re going to give me — ”

Han breaks in, sounding almost more bewildered than angry. “If _you_ killed Krennick then what the hell are you trying to blackmail us with, going on about him and the Japanese mob?”

“Your _son;_ did you think I wouldn’t recognize him? Bad luck for him to kill two men to sabotage the Skywalker deal and then have the only worthwhile thing in the place smashed up by the flood but — ”

“What in God’s name are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you doing me the small favor of $10,000 in exchange for me not going to the sheriff to talk about what I saw your boy doing.”

“Except,” Leila says coldly, “that I imagine Sheriff Tarquin would be much more interested in who killed his old friend than in who was responsible for the murder of two Japanese criminals.”

There’s a long silence. Poe holds his breath.

“Perhaps — maybe I settle for a more basic exchange of favors,” Beckett says hoarsely. “All the cash and jewelry you’ve got in the house, and I’ll refrain from shooting your husband dead.”

Poe tries to breathe slowly. Maybe he’ll just take some cash and some gold and go. Or maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll decide to eliminate the witnesses. Arturo’s got a six-shooter he keeps in case a horse breaks a leg; if Poe can wake him up, get it, and get back before Beckett makes up his mind to murder —

There’s a faint clink. Mrs. Solo stripping off her bracelets. He sees her shadow raise its arms; her earrings. She holds them out, and Beckett accepts them with his free hand.

“Hey,” he says. “These emeralds look — ”

Leila’s shadow dives and Poe dashes into the room, gasping, just in time to see her lift the fireplace poker with two hands and slam it into the back of Beckett’s skull.

Beckett drops like a stone. The jewels in his slack hand spill across the tile. Leila stands over him, breathing hard. She doesn’t have eyes for anybody but Han.

“What did Ben do?”

“I… I don’t know. I thought you knew.” He swallows hard. “Leila. I’m sorry. I thought — I thought _you’d_ killed Krennick. I thought Poe’d found out he was connected to Ben disappearing and I thought you made a deal with the Japanese mobsters. Killed him for it.”

Leila’s voice is steady. “If I’d thought that, I might have.” Then her eyes drop to the poker, and just for a moment, Poe sees it waver before she tightens her grip. “No one is more responsible for what Ben did than I am.”

“Luke,” Han growls.

“Luke too. And me. And you, Han.”

Han drops his head. “Yeah. Me too.”

Poe clears his throat. “Not to… but, uh. Is he dead?”

Leila looks down at the crumpled back of Beckett’s head. “Oh, I’d say so.” She sighs. “It was self-defense. But I don’t suppose Tarquin will be interested in that. God, he’ll be pleased to get his mitts on me.”

“Now listen,” Poe says, and swallows. “He — something real hard hit the back of his skull, yeah?”

“Yes… ?”

“Tile’s real slippery. Especially when it’s wet. If he visited late, while you’d been cleaning the floors — ” He points to the foot of the stairs. “That bannister’s made of iron. Same width as the poker. If we can disappear the gun — Tarquin was Krennick’s crony, and Beckett was in business with Krennick, but does the sheriff care too much if Beckett slipped and fell? If he let Krennick’s accidental death stand… ”

“That’s true,” Han says slowly.

“Move his body; get his blood on the bannister, if he’s bleeding, and then lay him on the bench; say Mrs. Solo saw him fall and tried to see if he was all right. That’ll explain any marks. And we should get rid of the gun, to get rid of the motive. And the poker, too, of course.” He wraps his handkerchief around his hand and reaches out for it. “Why do you even _have_ a poker? Who’d light a fire in this climate?”

The doorbell rings.

“Shove it in the fireplace,” Poe hisses. “Poker and the gun. Now.” Leila hurries to obey. Poe notes approvingly that she uses her skirt to pick up the gun “Han. Call the emergency number. There’s been an accident. It’s probably Finn, but we have to move.”

Han goes for the phone, and Poe walks to the door as quietly as he can, trying to see through the little iron-barred window who’s on the step without showing himself. All he sees is night.

Leila, the weapons hidden, comes behind him. “Shall I answer it?” she whispers.

“Do you want to?”

A strange little frown creases her forehead. Her eyes are fixed on the door. “Yes. I think I’d better.”

Finn is on the doorstep. So is Rey, and Rose. But Poe can’t tear his eyes from Ben Solo, standing rigid and silent on the threshold of his childhood home, staring at the ground, not even looking up to see who’s answered the door. His voice is thick as crude oil. “I need a favor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **marée** — (French) Husband. Poe repeats this as "marie," which is... sort of how it's pronounced. Poe's just being rude.  
>  **dobrze** — (Polish) Good. That would be the word Ben hears as "dobje."
> 
>  
> 
> Lotus rootstalks (rhizomes) are a standard item of both Vietnamese and Japanese cuisine.
> 
> Technically the first transpacific flight was in 1931, from Japan to Washington state. This was more or less a stunt and ended in a non-fatal crash. The first commercial transpacific route was established in 1936, from San Francisco to Manila, with stops in Honolulu, Midway, Wake, and Guam. The first non-stop commercial flight seems to have been either Manila to San Francisco in 1946 or Seattle to Tokyo, in 1949; I couldn't find confirmation on that.
> 
> Communist sexual politics varied widely internationally; Rose's, as she indicates, are a personal synthesis of Maoist/Ho Chi Minh Thought positions and Western European ideas. The idea that Ho Chi Minh was celibate, though widely propagated, seems to have been a myth
> 
> As previously mentioned, many early Zionists were hard on European Jews for "going quietly." The famous Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was born of an alliance between right-wing Zionist Jews and left-wing Socialist-Internationalist Jews.
> 
> Beckett has seen Leila's emerald earrings before, in Rey's ears in Chapter 8.


End file.
